Maternal Responses to Infant Distress: Linkages Between Specific Emotions and Neurophysiological Processes     

Nastassia J. Hajal  Pamela M. Cole  Douglas M. Teti 《Parenting, science and practice》2017,17(3):200-224

Objective. The goals of the current article were to test the presence of an association between mothers’ neural activity (measured by frontal cortical alpha asymmetry) and their specific emotions (measured by observed facial expressions) in response to infant distress and the moderation of this relation by mothers’ appraisal processes (measured by sense of parenting efficacy). Design. Mothers of 5- to 8-month-olds (n = 26) watched videos of their own infants expressing distress while their brain activity was recorded via electroencephalogram and their facial expressions were videotaped for later microcoding. Mothers also completed a questionnaire measure of parenting efficacy. Results. Greater neurophysiological withdrawal in response to infant distress videos, indexed by frontal alpha asymmetry, was associated with longer sad and tense expressions in mothers with average or below average parenting efficacy, but not in those with above average efficacy. Conclusions. Previous research showing that patterns of parents’ brain activity in response to child stimuli are associated with parenting behavior often interpret results in relation to parental emotion, but rarely measure specific concurrent emotions. The current study helps fill this gap in the literature by showing that maternal neurophysiological withdrawal (together with parenting efficacy) was associated with simultaneously measured facial expressions of negative emotion in response to infant distress stimuli.  相似文献   

Angry Responses to Infant Challenges: Parent,Marital, and Child Genetic Factors Associated With Harsh Parenting          下载免费PDF全文

Nastassia Hajal  Jenae Neiderhiser  Ginger Moore  Leslie Leve  Daniel Shaw  Gordon Harold  Laura Scaramella  Jody Ganiban  David Reiss 《Child development》2015,86(1):80-93

This study examined genetic and environmental influences on harsh parenting of adopted 9‐month‐olds (N = 503), with an emphasis on positive child‐, parent‐, and family‐level characteristics. Evocative gene–environment correlation (rGE) was examined by testing the effect of both positive and negative indices of birth parent temperament on adoptive parents’ harsh parenting. Adoptive fathers’ harsh parenting was inversely related to birth mother positive temperament, indicating evocative rGE, as well as to marital quality. Adoptive parents’ negative temperamental characteristics were related to hostile parenting for both fathers and mothers. Findings support the importance of enhancing positive family characteristics in addition to mitigating negative characteristics, as well as engaging multiple levels of the family system to prevent harsh parenting.  相似文献