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Maternal Delay and Social Discounting Behavior Predicts Impaired Mother‐Infant Bonding, Maternal Stress, and Paternal Involvement
Author(s) -
Brents Lisa,
Young Jonathan,
Knight Bettina,
Coker Jessica,
RayGriffith Shona,
James Andrew,
Stowe Zachary,
Kilts Clint
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.lb500
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , offspring , delay discounting , clinical psychology , stroop effect , anger , pregnancy , impulsivity , psychiatry , cognition , genetics , biology
Maternal care is a major determinant of offspring well‐being, but psychiatric conditions, such as depression and addiction, can interfere with maternal behavior and lead to poor offspring outcomes. We report an ongoing pilot study performed to develop tasks that objectively quantify maternal behavior in three groups of early postpartum women: healthy, depressed and opioid dependent. These innovative tasks are modified classical behavioral paradigms that exploit the Stroop effect (infant Stroop task, iStroop), and delay and social discounting (Maternal Baby Discounting Task, MBDT). Preliminary pooled data (n=4) show strong correlations between multiple MBDT discounting behaviors and mother‐infant bonding (Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire), stress (Parenting Stress Index‐Short Form), and paternal involvement (Parental Responsibility Scale). Lower delay and infant discounting was associated with impaired bonding, pathological anger and rejection, total stress, and paternal involvement. As expected in the iStroop, infant emotion (distressed versus neutral) had no effect as a distractor in this small, primarily depressed sample. Early results suggest that the iStroop and MBDT predict bonding, stress, paternal support and sensitivity to infant cues. The format of these tasks makes them ideal for use in neuroimaging studies to provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying normal and disrupted maternal brain‐behavior development. This study was supported by NIH 2T32DA022981‐06 and a BIRC Endowment Fund grant.