Maternal Depression and Cortisol in Pregnancy Predict Offspring Emotional Reactivity in the Preschool Period

Publication Date

7-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Cortisol, Depression, Emotional reactivity, Pregnancy

Abstract

Prenatal exposures to higher levels of maternal cortisol and depression have been linked to a variety of adverse physiological, neurological, and behavioral outcomes, such as dysregulated cortisol production, structural and functional differences in limbic areas of the brain, and greater negative emotionality. This study investigated prospective associations between maternal prepartum depression/cortisol levels and offspring emotional reactivity in 163 mother–child pairs. Women were assessed repeatedly during pregnancy, and later participated in a laboratory visit with their preschool‐aged children. Mothers self‐reported on depressive symptomatology during pregnancy and provided saliva samples for cortisol assay. Offspring emotional reactivity was assessed through multiple measures, including caregiver reports, cortisol response following a stressor, and laboratory observations of behavior. The findings suggest potential prenatal timing effects, with depression and maternal cortisol measured in the first and second trimesters being more strongly associated with child emotional reactivity. Sex was found to moderate associations between maternal prepartum depression/cortisol and child emotional reactivity, with the general pattern reflecting positive associations in girls, and negative associations in boys.

Copyright Date

7-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Swales, D. A., Winiarski, D. A., Smith, A. K., Stowe, Z. N., Newport, D. J., & Brennan, P. A. (2018). Maternal depression and cortisol in pregnancy predict offspring emotional reactivity in the preschool period. Developmental Psychobiology, 60(5), 557-566. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21631

Rights Holder

Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Developmental Psychobiology

Volume

60

Issue

5

First Page

557

Last Page

566

ISSN

1098-2302

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS