Maternal symptoms of prenatal depression predict context-incongruent negative emotion in infants. uri icon

abstract

  • Prenatal symptoms of depression in mothers are associated with infants' emotional reactivity. Context-incongruent reactivity, comprising mismatches between the eliciting context and emotional reactions, predicts negative long-term socioemotional outcomes in children. However, the etiology of context-incongruent reactivity is largely unknown, obscuring a full understanding of its potential role as a vulnerability in models outlining the transmission of risk for emotion difficulties from mothers to offspring. We tested mothers' (N = 92) prenatal depressive symptoms as prospective predictors of infants' context-incongruent emotion. Greater prenatal symptoms predicted more context-incongruent negativity in infants even when controlling for context-congruent affect. Findings demonstrate a novel utility of context-incongruent emotion as one possible vulnerability linking mothers' prenatal depression to socioemotional difficulties in offspring. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

published proceedings

  • Emotion

author list (cited authors)

  • Jennings, K. E., Piper, M. E., Kling, J. L., Bruner, A., & Brooker, R. J.

complete list of authors

  • Jennings, Katherine E||Piper, Madeleine E||Kling, Jennifer L||Bruner, Amanda||Brooker, Rebecca J