Angela N. Maupin’s research while affiliated with Yale University and other places

Infant-cue processing facilitates sensitive maternal care, which is necessary in the formation of healthy mother-infant attachment. Mothers may be particularly focused on cue processing early postpartum, contributing to intense preoccupation with their infant’s well-being. Prior reproductive experience, or parity, may also impact the intensity of infant-cue processing and has been found to influence P300 neural responses to infant faces during pregnancy and at 2 months postpartum. However, we do not know whether this parity effect persists. Thus, we examined the P300 to infant faces in 59 mothers at 2 and 7 months postpartum. Our main finding was that primiparous, as compared to multiparous, women showed a significantly higher P300 to infant faces across the postpartum period. Findings further emphasize the importance of studying parity and its impact on the neural processing of infant faces.

Substance use may influence mothers' responsiveness to their infants and negatively impact the parent-infant relationship. Maternal substance use may co-opt neural circuitry involved in caregiving, thus reducing the salience of infant cues and diminishing the sense of reward experienced by caring for infants. Gaps in understanding exist with regard to the mechanisms by which substance use operates to influence mothers' processing of infant cues and how this translates to caregiving. Therefore, we examined how substance use might relate to maternal neural responses to infant cues using event-related potentials (ERPs). Substance-using (n = 29) and nonsubstance-using (n = 29) mothers viewed photographs of infant faces and heard recordings of infant vocalizations while electroencephalography was recorded simultaneously. Three specific ERP components were used to examine initial processing of infant faces (N170) and cries (N100), and attentional allocation to infant faces and cries (P300). Substance-using mothers did not discriminate facial affect at early encoding stages (N170), were generally slower to orient to infant cries (N100), showed heightened responses to neutral faces (P300), and failed to adaptively differentiate between high-distress versus low-distress cries (P300). These differences may be important to caregiving behaviors associated with the formation of mother-child attachment. Implications are discussed, as are limitations and future directions.

Prior reproductive experience, or parity, may contribute to differential neural responses to infant stimuli during pregnancy. We examined the P300 elicited by viewing infant and adult faces, as well as houses, in women pregnant with their first child and compared their neural responses to women who had at least one child prior to their current pregnancy. We found the P300 amplitude was larger in women pregnant with their first child as compared to pregnant women who had previously had children. This larger P300 response was observed in response to all visual stimuli and was not specific to infant faces. Taken together, these findings indicate increased sensitivity toward social and non-social stimuli in pregnancy and indicate the importance of measuring parity in social neuroscience studies of pregnancy and motherhood.

Understanding the maternal neural response to infant affective cues has important implications for parent-child relationships. The current study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine patterns in mothers’ responses to infant affective cues, and evaluated the influence of maternal experience, defined by parity (i.e., the number of children a mother has) on ERP responses. Eighty-three mothers, three months postpartum, viewed photographs of displays of infant emotional faces (sad or happy) and listened to infant cries of different distress levels and a control tone. Maternal neural response was modulated by the emotional content of the auditory stimulus, as indexed by the N100 amplitude and latency. However, response to infant faces was not modulated by the emotional content of the stimuli as indexed by the N170. Neither N100 nor N170 were affected by parity. Maternal engagement with auditory stimuli, as indexed by the P300, was modulated by the emotional content of the cry and was affected by parity. A similar parity effect was observed for the P300 response to infant faces. Results suggest that parity may play an important role at later stages of maternal infant cue perception.

Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) is a widely used parenting intervention that is gaining popularity globally as it is currently being delivered across several continents. Despite the global uptake of COS-P, there is limited research on its effectiveness with considerable variability in its delivery. Here we present a multi-site evaluation of the group delivery of COS-P to under-resourced mothers (n = 131 enrolled) in an urban community as facilitated by community-based providers (n = 12) from community sites (n = 6) that provide maternal and child services. The feasibility and acceptability of delivering COS-P in the community are highlighted as well as characteristics of sites and providers as they relate to implementation efforts, and pre and post-intervention data examining COS-P and maternal caregiving functioning (i.e., depressive symptoms, reflective functioning) are also included. Several service delivery barriers were encountered at agency, provider and participant levels that created obstacles for program dissemination, participant retention and evaluation. Nonetheless, COS-P was successfully delivered in the community when sites embedded the program within their existing infrastructure and had the internal capacity for delivery, participant recruitment, supervision, and community presence. Mothers who participated in COS-P also reported fewer depressive symptoms following the intervention (n = 25). This multi-site implementation and evaluation study has important implications for the delivery of parenting services to under-resourced communities globally. Implications for future research and service delivery are discussed.

Objective. Smoking has a detrimental impact on maternal physical health and exposes children to secondhand smoke, but the extent to which it affects maternal brain and behavior is not well-known and may have implications for parent and child development. We examined how current smoking status might relate to maternal neural responses to infant cues using event-related potentials. Design. Current smoking (n = 35) and non-smoking (n = 35) mothers viewed photographs of emotional infant faces while electroencephalography was simultaneously recorded. Results. The latency of the face-specific N170 event-related potential component was delayed in smoking mothers compared to non-smoking mothers, and the P300 was differentiated by smoking status. Conclusions. Postpartum smoking is associated with event-related potential measures that may reflect modulation of infant face perception in motherhood.

The transition to parenthood marks a significant developmental period for the mother. Clinical and preclinical studies evidence neural and hormonal changes that support maternal behavior that is critical to infant survival and development. These changes suggest marked plasticity as a result of reproduction in the mother. Furthermore, multiple reproductive experiences may contribute to long-lasting changes to support more efficient and competent caregiving with subsequent pregnancies and births. However, less is known about neural, hormonal, and behavioral changes that occur as a function of parity-the number of children a woman has. Here, we highlight behavioral, neural, and hormonal changes that occur as women transition to parenthood, with a special emphasis on parity-related changes. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed, as well as clinical implications to be considered in light of parity research.

Parental reflective functioning refers to the capacity for a parent to understand their own and their infant's mental states, and how these mental states relate to behavior. Higher levels of parental reflective functioning may be associated with greater sensitivity to infant emotional signals in fostering adaptive and responsive caregiving. We investigated this hypothesis by examining associations between parental reflective functioning and neural correlates of infant face and cry perception using event-related potentials (ERPs) in a sample of recent mothers. We found both early and late ERPs were associated with different components of reflective functioning. These findings suggest that parental reflective functioning may be associated with the neural correlates of infant cue perception and further support the value of enhancing reflective functioning as a mechanism in parenting intervention programs.

Objective: Despite recent federal recommendations calling for increased funding for early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) as a means to decrease preschool expulsions, no randomized-controlled evaluations of this form of intervention have been reported in the scientific literature. This study is the first attempt to isolate the effects of ECMHC for enhancing classroom quality, decreasing teacher-rated behavior problems, and decreasing the likelihood of expulsion in targeted children in early childhood classrooms. Method: The sample consisted of 176 target children (3-4 years old) and 88 preschool classrooms and teachers randomly assigned to receive ECMHC through Connecticut's statewide Early Childhood Consultation Partnership (ECCP) or waitlist control treatment. Before randomization, teachers selected 2 target children in each classroom whose behaviors most prompted the request for ECCP. Evaluation measurements were collected before and after treatment, and child behavior and social skills and overall quality of the childcare environment were assessed. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to evaluate the effectiveness of ECCP and to account for the nested structure of the study design. Results: Children who received ECCP had significantly lower ratings of hyperactivity, restlessness, externalizing behaviors, problem behaviors, and total problems compared with children in the control group even after controlling for gender and pretest scores. No effects were found on likelihood of expulsion and quality of childcare environment. Conclusion: ECCP resulted in significant decreases across several domains of teacher-rated externalizing and problem behaviors and is a viable and potentially cost-effective means for infusing mental health services into early childhood settings. Clinical and policy implications for ECMHC are discussed.

There is some evidence linking maternal depression, harsh parenting, and children's internal representations of attachment, yet, longitudinal examinations of these relationships and differences in the developmental pathways between boys and girls are lacking. Moderated mediation growth curves were employed to examine harsh parenting as a mechanism underlying the link between maternal depression and children's dysregulated representations using a nationally-representative, economically-vulnerable sample of mothers and their children (n = 575; 49% boys, 51% girls). Dysregulation representations were measured using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery at five years of age (M = 5.14, SD = 0.29). Harsh parenting mediated the association between early maternal depression and dysregulated representations for girls. Though initial harsh parenting was a significant mediator for boys, a stronger direct effect of maternal depression to dysregulated representations emerged over time. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for intervention efforts aimed at promoting early supportive parenting.