Treating Prepartum Depression to Improve Infant Developmental Outcomes: A Study of Diabetes in Pregnancy

Whether and how the co-occurrence of depression and diabetes in pregnancy may worsen infant development has not been reported. Pregnant women with diabetes and with (n?=?34) or without (n?=?34) major depressive disorder (MDD) were followed during pregnancy and 6-months postpartum. The MDD subset received randomly assigned treatment with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or supportive counseling (SC). Depression severity was measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); infant developmental outcomes were measured with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID) and its Behavior Rating Scale (BRS). Infants of women with MDD had lower BRS scores (p?=?.02). Reduction in depression scores was associated with better infant outcomes on the BSID and BRS (p values <.03). These preliminary findings suggest depression occurring in pregnant women with diabetes is associated with poorer infant development and improvement in prepartum depression is associated with improvement in measures of infant development.     

The use of Internet technology for psychoeducation and support with dementia caregivers

A large randomized trial evaluated the benefits of online education, support, and self-care promotion for caregivers of persons with dementia. Anecdotal reports from participants indicated enjoyment of the materials, convenient access from home, and support from professionals and other caregivers. A substantial number of screened caregivers experienced obstacles of access, cost, and time regarding use of technology. Telephone options are being explored, and future caregiving generations are expected to have increased exposure and willingness to use computer technology, such as the program described here.     

Effortful control and parenting: Associations with HPA axis reactivity in early childhood

While activation of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal (HPA) axis is an adaptive response to stress, excessive HPA axis reactivity may be an important marker of childhood vulnerability to psychopathology. Parenting, including parent affect during parent–child interactions, may play an important role in shaping the developing HPA system; however, the association of parent affect may be moderated by child factors, especially children's emerging self‐regulatory skills. We therefore tested the relationship between parent affectivity and 160 preschoolers’ cortisol reactivity during a laboratory visit, examining children's effortful control (EC) as a moderator. Greater parent negative affectivity was related to greater initial and increasing cortisol over time, but only when children were low in EC. Higher parent positive affectivity was related to a higher baseline cortisol for children with low EC and lower baseline cortisol for children with high EC. Results indicate that children's EC moderates the extent to which parent affect shapes stress reactive systems in early childhood.     

The Associations of Patient Demographic Characteristics and Health Information Recall: The Mediating Role of Health Literacy

ABSTRACT

We examined the mediating role of health literacy in the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and health information recall. Baseline data from two studies that focused on hypertensive adults (N = 1190; M = 62.28 years, SD = 11.98; 35.5% female; 45.9% African-American) were analyzed. The final model, which adjusted for recruitment site, indicated that financial status, race, and education were indirectly related to health information recall through health literacy. Increasing education was also directly related to better health information recall. Increasing age was not related to health literacy, but was related to poorer health information recall. The final model fit the data very well, χ²(3) = 0.69, p = .36, RMSEA = .000 (90% CI = .000 to .024),CFI = 1.00. The results suggest that health literacy might be one of the mechanisms underlying the relationships between participant demographic characteristics and poor health outcomes due to inaccurate recall of instructions.     

Perceptual specialization and configural face processing in infancy

Adults’ face processing expertise includes sensitivity to second-order configural information (spatial relations among features such as distance between eyes). Prior research indicates that infants process this information in female faces. In the current experiments, 9-month-olds discriminated spacing changes in upright human male and monkey faces but not in inverted faces. However, they failed to process matching changes in upright house stimuli. A similar pattern of performance was exhibited by 5-month-olds. Thus, 5- and 9-month-olds exhibited specialization by processing configural information in upright primate faces but not in houses or inverted faces. This finding suggests that, even early in life, infants treat faces in a special manner by responding to changes in configural information more readily in faces than in non-face stimuli. However, previously reported differences in infants’ processing of human versus monkey faces at 9 months of age (but not at younger ages), which have been associated with perceptual narrowing, were not evident in the current study. Thus, perceptual narrowing is not absolute in the sense of loss of the ability to process information from other species’ faces at older ages.     

Gender Differences in Young Children's Temperament Traits: Comparisons Across Observational and Parent‐Report Methods

Evidence supporting the continuity between child temperament and adult personality traits is accumulating. One important indicator of continuity is the presence of reliable gender differences in traits across the lifespan. A substantial literature demonstrates gender differences on certain adult personality traits and recent meta‐analytic work on child samples suggests similar gender differences for some broad and narrow domains of temperament. However, most existing studies of children rely only on parent‐report measures. The present study investigated gender differences in temperament traits assessed by laboratory observation, maternal‐report, and paternal‐report measures. Across three independent samples, behavioral observations, maternal‐report, and paternal‐report measures of temperament were collected on 463 boys and 402 girls. Across all three methods, girls demonstrated higher positive affect and fear and lower activity level than boys. For laboratory measures, girls demonstrated higher levels of sociability and lower levels of overall negative emotionality (NE), sadness, anger and impulsivity than boys. However, girls demonstrated higher levels of overall NE and sadness than boys when measured by maternal reports. Finally, girls demonstrated lower levels of sociability based on paternal reports. Results are discussed in relation to past meta‐analytic work and developmental implications of the findings.     

Opposing pupil responses to offered and anticipated reward values

Previous studies have shown that the pupils dilate more in anticipation of larger rewards. This finding raises the possibility of a more general association between reward amount and pupil size. We tested this idea by characterizing macaque pupil responses to offered rewards during evaluation and comparison in a binary choice task. To control attention, we made use of a design in which offers occurred in sequence. By looking at pupil responses after choice but before reward, we confirmed the previously observed positive association between pupil size and anticipated reward values. Surprisingly, however, we find that pupil size is negatively correlated with the value of offered gambles before choice, during both evaluation and comparison stages of the task. These results demonstrate a functional distinction between offered and anticipated rewards and present evidence against a narrow version of the simulation hypothesis; the idea that we represent offers by reactivating states associated with anticipating them. They also suggest that pupil size is correlated with relative, not absolute, values of offers, suggestive of an accept–reject model of comparison.     

Negative life events and cognitive vulnerability to depression: Informant effects and sex differences in the prediction of depressive symptoms in middle childhood

While diathesis-stress models of cognitive vulnerability to depression (CVD) in childhood have been tested, few studies have included both parent- and child-reported negative life events, despite the fact that they provide unique information on events that may be relevant to depression risk in boys and girls. It was hypothesized that different types of stress may show moderation of CVD for boys and girls; specifically, we predicted that parent-reported stressors may moderate boys’ CVD, and that self-reported stress may play a more critical moderating role for girls. A community sample of 182 eight-year-olds completed measures of CVD at baseline, and child- and parent-reported measures of stress were collected at follow-up, one year later. Support for diathesis-stress models of CVD varied depending on child sex and the source of information on stress. Results highlight the importance of collecting multiple measures of stress in testing diathesis-stress models of CVD in middle childhood.     

Cognitive vulnerability to depression during middle childhood: Stability and associations with maternal affective styles and parental depression

Theories of cognitive vulnerability to depression (CVD) imply that CVD is early-emerging and trait-like; however, little longitudinal work has tested this premise in middle childhood, or examined theoretically relevant predictors of child CVD. We examined test–retest correlations of self-referent encoding task performance and self-reported attributional styles and their associations with parental characteristics in 205 seven-year-olds. At baseline, child CVD was assessed, structured clinical interviews were conducted with parents, and ratings of observed maternal affective styles were made. Children’s CVD was re-assessed approximately one and two years later. Both measures of children’s CVD were prospectively and concurrently associated with children’s depressive symptoms and showed modest stability. Multilevel modeling indicated that maternal criticism and paternal depression were related to children’s CVD. Findings indicate that even early-emerging CVD is a valid marker of children’s depression risk.