Are cortisol concentrations in human breast milk associated with infant crying?

The present longitudinal study is the first to investigate the association between human breast milk cortisol and infant crying over the first three months of life. Higher concentrations of breast milk cortisol were expected to be differentially associated with fussing and crying in boys and girls. At 2, 6, and 12 weeks of infant age, mothers (N = 70) collected a morning sample of their milk and kept a 3-day diary to measure infant fussing and crying.

Effects of the Caregiver Interaction Profile Training on Caregiver-Child Interactions in Dutch Child Care Centers: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Previous studies underscore the need to improve caregiver-child interactions in early child care centers.

Objective: In this study we used a randomized controlled trial to examine whether a 5-week video feedback training can improve six key interactive skills of caregivers in early child care centers: Sensitive responsiveness, respect for autonomy, structuring and limit setting, verbal communication, developmental stimulation, and fostering positive peer interactions.

Method: A total of 139 caregivers from 68 early child care groups for 0- to 4-year-old children in Dutch child care centers participated in this RCT, 69 in the intervention condition and 70 in the control condition.

Fostering Emotion Expression and Affective Involvement with Communication Partners in People with Congenital Deafblindness and Intellectual Disabilities.

Background: Recent studies have shown that it is possible to foster affective involvement between people with congenital deafblindness and their communication partners. Affective involvement is crucial for well-being, and it is important to know whether it can also be fostered with people who have congenital deafblindness and intellectual disabilities.

Methods: This study used a multiple-baseline design to examine whether an intervention based on the Intervention Model for Affective Involvement would (i) increase affective involvement between four participants with congenital deafblindness and intellectual disabilities and their 13 communication partners and (ii) increase the participants' positive emotions and decrease their negative emotions.

Infant attachment predicts bodily freezing in adolescence: evidence from a prospective longitudinal study.

Early life-stress, particularly maternal deprivation, is associated with long-lasting deviations in animals' freezing responses. Given the relevance of freezing for stress-coping, translational research is needed to examine the relation between insecure infant-parent attachment and bodily freezing-like behavior in humans. Therefore, we investigated threat-related reductions in body sway (indicative of freezing-like behavior) in 14-year-old adolescents (N = 79), for whom attachment security was earlier assessed in infancy.

Cortisol levels of infants in center care across the first year of life: links with quality of care and infant temperament.

Cortisol concentrations of older children in childcare centers have been found to be higher than at home. This study focuses on infant cortisol in childcare centers throughout the first year of life, and aims to investigate whether inter-individual differences can be explained by temperament, the quality of maternal behavior, and the quality of center care. Sixty-four infants were followed for 9 months after entering care at 3 months of age.

Associations between maternal prenatal cortisol concentrations and child outcomes: A systematic review.

A frequently proposed mechanism underlying the link between maternal prenatal stress/anxiety and child outcomes is heightened concentrations of maternal cortisol. In this systematic review, empirical findings on associations between maternal prenatal cortisol concentrations and child outcomes (physical/health, cognitive/motor, psychological/behavioral, and cortisol) are summarized. The number of empirical studies that find significant associations between maternal prenatal cortisol and child outcomes is small, but the majority of the studies that do find associations show that maternal cortisol is related to altered child outcomes (e.

Maternal prenatal stress is associated with the infant intestinal microbiota.

Maternal prenatal stress has been often associated with infant physical development and health, as well as psychological functioning and behavior. However, the mechanisms underlying these relations remain elusive. The goal of the present study was to prospectively investigate the development of the intestinal microbiota as a potential pathway linking maternal prenatal stress and infant health.

Does the arrival index predict physiological stress reactivity in children.

Knowledge about children's stress reactivity and its correlates is mostly based on one stress task, making it hard to assess the generalizability of the results. The development of an additional stress paradigm for children, that also limits stress exposure and test time, could greatly advance this field of research. Research in adults may provide a starting point for the development of such an additional stress paradigm, as changes in salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA) over a 1-h pre-stress period in the laboratory correlated strongly with subsequent reactivity to stress task (Balodis et al.

Acute psychosocial stress and children's memory.

We investigated whether children's performance on working memory (WM) and delayed retrieval (DR) tasks decreased after stress exposure, and how physiological stress responses related to performance under stress. About 158 children (83 girls; Mage = 10.61 years, SD = 0.

Need fulfillment, need importance, and depressive symptoms of residents over the first eight months of living in a nursing home.

Background: Based on self-determination theory and adaptation theories, the study aim was to investigate the relationship between need fulfillment (of autonomy, relatedness, and competence), need importance, and depressive symptoms during the first months of living in a nursing home.

Methods: Eight-month longitudinal questionnaire study in which 75 persons newly admitted to units for physically frail residents participated at baseline. Twenty-three longitudinal participants were remaining at the third and final measurement wave.

The relation between gaze aversion and cortisol reactivity in middle childhood.

The present study sought to investigate the relation between ethological observations of children's gaze aversion during a psychosocial stress task and their cortisol reactivity to the task, and how this relation might be moderated by how stressful the children perceived the stress task to be. Videos of 140 children (74 girls; Mage=10.60years) performing a psychosocial stress task in front of a jury were coded for displays of the children's gaze aversion from the jury, and saliva samples were taken to determine their cortisol reactivity.

Need fulfillment in the nursing home: resident and observer perspectives in relation to resident well-being.

Self-reports in nursing homes generally show highly satisfied residents, whereas observational studies provide more nuanced results. In this study, which is based on self-determination theory, the perspective of nursing home residents (self-reports) is compared to the perspective of trained "neutral" observers (video-observations). The experiences of physically frail older residents are measured with regard to the fulfillment of their needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence.

Cortisol regulation in 12-month-old human infants: associations with the infants' early history of breastfeeding and co-sleeping.

Experiences during early life are suggested to affect the physiological systems underlying stress responses, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). While stressful early experiences have been associated with dysregulated HPA-axis functioning, positive early experiences, i.e.

The relation between emotion regulation strategies and physiological stress responses in middle childhood.

The current study sought to examine whether children's spontaneous use of the emotion regulation strategies suppression and reappraisal during a psychosocial stress task was related to their cortisol and alpha-amylase responses to that task. Salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase responses to a psychosocial stress task were assessed in 158 10-year-old children (83 girls). The children completed a self-report questionnaire measuring use of reappraisal and suppression during the task.

Peer rejection and HPA activity in middle childhood: friendship makes a difference.

Exclusion and victimization by classmates were related to levels and diurnal change in cortisol in 97 fourth graders (53% boys, M = 9.3 years). Number and quality of friendships were considered as moderators.

Early school outcomes for children of postpartum depressed mothers: comparison with a community sample.

Previous studies of the long-term effects of maternal postpartum depression (PPD) on child development have mostly focused on a limited set of outcomes, and have often not controlled for risk factors associated with maternal depression. The present study compared children of postpartum depressed mothers (n = 29) with children from a community sample (n = 113) in terms of a broad range of developmental outcomes in the early school period. Controlling for risk factors associated with maternal depression, we found that children of postpartum depressed mothers had lower ego-resiliency, lower peer social competence, and lower school adjustment than the community sample children.

Solitary sleeping in young infants is associated with heightened cortisol reactivity to a bathing session but not to a vaccination.

Background: In this prospective longitudinal study, we investigated the relation between sleeping arrangements and infant cortisol reactivity to stressors in the first two post-natal months. Co-sleeping, as compared to solitary sleeping, is hypothesized to provide more parental external stress regulation by night, thus reducing general stress sensitivity. We therefore expected lower cortisol reactivity to stress in infants who co-slept more regularly.

Which preventive interventions effectively enhance depressed mothers' sensitivity? A meta-analysis.

Improving depressed mothers' sensitivity is assumed to be a key element in preventing adverse outcomes for children of such mothers. This meta-analysis examines the short-term effectiveness of preventive interventions in terms of enhancing depressed mothers' sensitivity toward their child and investigates what type of intervention is most effective. Thirteen interventions, reported in 10 controlled outcome studies, met the inclusion criteria (N = 918).

Long-term effects of a home-visiting intervention for depressed mothers and their infants.

Background: Whereas preventive interventions for depressed mothers and their infants have yielded positive short-term outcomes, few studies have examined their long-term effectiveness. The present follow-up of a randomised controlled trial (RCT) is one of the first to examine the longer-term effects of an intervention for mothers with postpartum depression and their infants at school-age. In early infancy, the intervention was found effective in improving mother-infant interaction and the child's attachment to its mother.

Maternal prenatal stress and cortisol reactivity to stressors in human infants.

Early life factors can shape the development of hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. Maternal prenatal stress might constitute such an early environmental factor. As little is known about the relation between maternal prenatal stress and cortisol reactivity in human offspring, we performed a longitudinal study including four assessments of infant cortisol reactivity to stressful events in a non-clinical population.

Developmental stimulation in child care centers contributes to young infants' cognitive development.

This study examined whether the quality of caregiver behavior in child care centers contributes to infant cognitive development at 9 months of age. Sixty-four infants (34 boys) were observed with their primary caregivers in child care centers at 3, 6, and 9 months of age. Caregiver behavior was rated for sensitivity and for stimulation of infant development during one-to-one caregiving interactions.

Cortisol in the first year of life: normative values and intra-individual variability.

Introduction: Many studies have incorporated cortisol measurements when studying infant development, but descriptions of normal development of basal cortisol levels in large study populations are scarce. The present study aimed to establish norm values for infant basal cortisol levels and to examine the development of intra-individual variability in the first year of life.

Methods: More than 2500 cortisol samples were collected in 300 infants at three different ages.

Five-year-olds' cortisol reactions to an attachment story completion task.

An earlier study showed that negative parent-child interactions elicit cortisol increases in 5-year-old children (Smeekens et al., 2007a). In the present study, we examined whether an "imaginary" parent-child interaction situation, in which the child used a parent and child doll to complete a set of more or less stressful story beginnings, also elicited cortisol increases in the children.

The predictive value of different infant attachment measures for socioemotional development at age 5 years.

The predictive value of different infant attachment measures was examined in a community-based sample of 111 healthy children (59 boys, 52 girls). Two procedures to assess infant attachment, the Attachment Q-Set (applied on a relatively short observation period) and a shortened version of the Strange Situation Procedure (SSSP), were applied to the children at age 15 months and related to a comprehensive set of indicators of the children's socioemotional development at age 5 years. Three attachment measures were used as predictors: AQS security, SSSP security, and SSSP attachment disorganization.

Child care in The Netherlands: trends in quality over the years 1995-2005.

The authors assessed the quality of child care in a representative national sample of 42 child-care centers in the Netherlands and compared it with the quality of care that researchers have found using similar samples in 1995 (M. H. van IJzendoorn, L.