| Description |
Maternal mood during the prenatal period may affect a broad range of infant outcomes. This study examined the impact of mothers' trait anxiety and emotion dysregulation on their 7-month old infants' sympathetic nervous system as measured by electrodermal activity (EDA) during the still-face paradigm. Measuring the sympathetic nervous system using EDA has become widely used as a means of indirectly observing baseline state, reactivity, and regulatory capacity in child and adult populations, but infants have rarely been studied in this way. We aimed to (1) test whether infants' electrodermal response systems react similarly to those of adults under stress, (2) examine whether mothers with high levels of stress and/or emotion dysregulation during pregnancy had infants with high baseline EDA, and (3) test whether mothers with high stress and/or emotion dysregulation during pregnancy have infants with greater increases in EDA during the still-face paradigm. We found that infants' levels of EDA did increase significantly during the still-face episode, as expected. Prenatal maternal anxiety affected infants' baseline EDA as expected, though maternal emotion dysregulation did not. Finally, prenatal maternal emotion dysregulation was not associated significantly with infant electrodermal reactivity, but higher prenatal maternal trait anxiety predicted less electrodermal reactivity to the still-face episode. These findings suggest that EDA is a valid measure of infant stress reactivity and help build a foundation for understanding intergenerational effects of prenatal maternal emotion dysregulation and anxiety and infant SNS development. |
