The effect of perinatal interventions on parent anxiety, infant socio-emotional development and parent-infant relationship outcomes: A systematic review.

Background: Infants of parents with perinatal anxiety are at elevated likelihood of experiencing disruption in the parent-infant relationship, as well as difficulties with socio-emotional functioning in later development. Interventions delivered in the perinatal period have the potential to protect the early dyadic relationship and support infants' ongoing development and socio-emotional outcomes. This review primarily aimed to examine the efficacy of perinatal interventions on parent anxiety, infant socio-emotional development/temperament, and parent-infant relationship outcomes.

Vocalization and physiological hyperarousal in infant-caregiver dyads where the caregiver has elevated anxiety.

Co-regulation of physiological arousal within the caregiver-child dyad precedes later self-regulation within the individual. Despite the importance of unimpaired self-regulatory development for later adjustment outcomes, little is understood about how early co-regulatory processes can become dysregulated during early life. Aspects of caregiver behavior, such as patterns of anxious speech, may be one factor influencing infant arousal dysregulation.

Physiological stress, sustained attention, emotion regulation, and cognitive engagement in 12-month-old infants from urban environments.

Over the last 2 centuries there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of children who grow up in cities. However, relatively little work has explored in detail the physiological and cognitive pathways through which city life may affect early development. To assess this, we observed a cohort of infants growing up in diverse settings across South East England across a 2-day assessment battery.

In infancy, it's the extremes of arousal that are 'sticky': Naturalistic data challenge purely homeostatic approaches to studying self-regulation.

Most theoretical models of arousal/regulatory function emphasise the maintenance of homeostasis; consistent with this, most previous research into arousal has concentrated on examining individuals' recovery following the administration of experimentally administered stressors. Here, we take a different approach: we recorded day-long spontaneous fluctuations in autonomic arousal (indexed via electrocardiogram, heart rate variability and actigraphy) in a cohort of 82 typically developing 12-month-old infants while they were at home and awake. Based on the aforementioned models, we hypothesised that extreme high or low arousal states might be more short-lived than intermediate arousal states.

Parents Mimic and Influence Their Infant's Autonomic State through Dynamic Affective State Matching.

When we see someone experiencing an emotion, and when we experience it ourselves, common neurophysiological activity occurs [1, 2]. But although inter-dyadic synchrony, concurrent and sequential [3], has been identified, its functional significance remains inadequately understood. Specifically, how do influences of partner A on partner B reciprocally influence partner A? For example, if I am experiencing an affective state and someone matches their physiological state to mine, what influence does this have on me-the person experiencing the emotion? Here, we investigated this using infant-parent dyads.

Influences of environmental stressors on autonomic function in 12-month-old infants: understanding early common pathways to atypical emotion regulation and cognitive performance.

Background: Previous research has suggested that children exposed to more early-life stress show worse mental health outcomes and impaired cognitive performance in later life, but the mechanisms subserving these relationships remain poorly understood.

Method: Using miniaturised microphones and physiological arousal monitors (electrocardiography, heart rate variability and actigraphy), we examined for the first time infants' autonomic reactions to environmental stressors (noise) in the home environment, in a sample of 82 12-month-old infants from mixed demographic backgrounds. The same infants also attended a laboratory testing battery where attention- and emotion-eliciting stimuli were presented.