Objectives:
The present study aimed to explore the effect of risk factors associated with the COVID-19 outbreak experience on parents' and children's well-being.
Methods:
Parents of children aged ...between 2- and 14-years-old completed an online survey reporting their home environment conditions, any relation they had to the pandemic consequences, their difficulties experienced due to the quarantine, their perception of individual and parent-child dyadic stress, and their children's emotional and behavioral problems.
Results:
Results showed that the perception of the difficulty of quarantine is a crucial factor that undermines both parents' and children's well-being. Quarantine's impact on children's behavioral and emotional problems is mediated by parent's individual and dyadic stress, with a stronger effect from the latter. Parents who reported more difficulties in dealing with quarantine show more stress. This, in turn, increases the children's problems. Living in a more at-risk area, the quality of the home environment, or the relation they have with the pandemic consequences, do not have an effect on families' well-being.
Conclusions:
Dealing with quarantine is a particularly stressful experience for parents who must balance personal life, work, and raising children, being left alone without other resources. This situation puts parents at a higher risk of experiencing distress, potentially impairing their ability to be supportive caregivers. The lack of support these children receive in such a difficult moment may be the reason for their more pronounced psychological symptoms. Policies should take into consideration the implications of the lockdown for families' mental health, and supportive interventions for the immediate and for the future should be promoted.
This study explored the role of maternal sensitivity and infant‐directed speech (IDS) prosody in infants’ expression and regulation of negative emotion. Seventy mothers and their 3‐month‐old infants ...were observed during the Still‐Face Paradigm (SFP). Maternal sensitivity and IDS prosody were assessed at baseline and infant negative affect in the baseline, still‐face, and reunion episodes. Results showed that prototypical IDS prosody characterized by wider fundamental frequency (F0) variability was related to decreases in infant's negative affect, but only if accompanied by maternal sensitivity. Infants of sensitive mothers who spoke with more prototypical IDS prosody showed better abilities to regulate negative affect during the SFP. When prototypical IDS prosody was accompanied by low maternal sensitivity, infants showed lower regulation of negative emotions. In conclusion, infant negative affect regulation in a dyadic setting is facilitated by an optimal combination of both more prototypical maternal IDS prosody and maternal sensitive responsiveness. Implications for the study of mother–infant interaction are discussed.
The understanding of non-genetic regulation of platelet indices--platelet count, plateletcrit, mean platelet volume, and platelet distribution width--is limited. The association of these platelet ...indices with a number of biochemical, environmental and clinical variables was studied in a large cohort of the general population.
Men and women (n=18,097, 52% women, 56±12 years) were randomly recruited from various villages in Molise (Italy) in the framework of the population-based cohort study "Moli-sani". Hemochromocytometric analyses were performed using an automatic analyzer (Beckman Coulter, IL, Milan, Italy). Associations of platelet indices with dependent variables were investigated by multivariable linear regression analysis.
Full models including age, sex, body mass index, blood pressure, smoking, menopause, white and red blood cell counts, mean corpuscular volume, D-dimers, C-reactive protein, high-density lipoproteins, low-density lipoproteins, triglycerides, glucose, and drug use explained 16%, 21%, 1.9% and 4.7% of platelet count, plateletcrit, mean platelet volume and platelet distribution width variability, respectively; variables that appeared to be most strongly associated were white blood cell count, age, and sex. Platelet count, mean platelet volume and plateletcrit were positively associated with white blood cell count, while platelet distribution width was negatively associated with white blood cell count. Platelet count and plateletcrit were also positively associated with C-reactive protein and D-dimers (P<0.0001). Each of the other variables, although associated with platelet indices in a statistically significant manner, only explained less than 0.5% of their variability. Platelet indices varied across Molise villages, independently of any other platelet count determinant or characteristics of the villages.
The association of platelet indices with white blood cell count, C-reactive protein and D-dimers in a general population underline the relation between platelets and inflammation.
Background: This study seeks to further our understanding of the factors associated with adolescent athletes and disordered eating, by expanding current research into a less-explored eating disorder ...known as orthorexia. Aim: The aim of the study is to explore the impact of parents’ relationships and emotional regulation on the orthorexia nervosa (ON) tendencies of adolescent athletes. Methods: The participants were 303 adolescents, ranging from 15 to 17 years old, of which 139 participated in competitive sport, and 164 did not. Three self-report questionnaires were administered to assess orthorexia (ORTO-15), relationship with parents (Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment) and emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). Results: The results highlight that those who practice sports report higher levels of orthorexia, inadequate relationships with parents, as well as greater emotional regulation difficulties. Furthermore, inadequate parents’ relationship predicts orthorexia while expressive emotional regulation mediates this relationship. Conclusion: These findings highlight how ON tendencies in athletes are linked to poor management of emotions combined with inadequate relationships with parents in terms of communication and affection. Implications for practice and support for athletes are discussed.
As captured by the individual trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), highly sensitive children perceive, process, and responds more strongly to stimuli. This increased sensitivity may make ...more demanding the process of regulating and managing emotions. Yet, developmental psychology literature also showed that other variables, as those related to the rearing environment, are likely to contribute to the process of regulating emotions. With the current contribution, we aim to bridge two lines of research, that of attachment studies and that of SPS, by investigating the additive and interactive contribution of SPS and internal working models of attachment representations on emotion regulation competencies in school-aged children.
Participants were
= 118 Italian children (mean age: 6.5, SD = 0.58 years, and 51.8% female) with their mothers. Children's positive attachment representations were rated observationally through the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task procedure during an individual session at school. Mothers reported on children SPS trait and emotion regulation competencies completing the Highly Sensitive Child Scale-parent report and the Emotion Regulation Checklist. We performed and compared a series of main and interaction effect models.
SPS was not directly associated with emotion regulation but it was significantly associated with positive attachment representations in predicting emotion regulation. Highly sensitive children showed poorer emotion regulation when the internalized representations were low in maternal warmth and responsiveness. When driven by sensitive and empathic attachment representation, highly sensitive children showed better emotion regulation than less-sensitive peers, suggesting a for better and for worse effect.
Highly sensitive children are not only more vulnerable to adversities but also show better emotion regulation competencies when supported by positive internal working models of attachment relationships. Overall, findings shed light on the link between SPS and attachment and suggest that working for promoting secure attachment relationships in parent-child dyads may promote better emotion regulation competences, particularly in highly sensitive children.
Introduction Mother–infant attunement is fundamental to supporting infant socio-emotional development. Based on the assumption that we connect better with others if we are aware of and connected with ...our own experience, mindfulness could affect the maternal ability to attune to the infant. However, little is known about this topic in the first year of life. Study 1 aimed to investigate the role of maternal dispositional mindfulness and mindful parenting in mother–infant physiological and behavioral attunement at 3 months of age. Study 2 aimed to explore the effect of a mindfulness-based intervention not specific to parenting experience on mother–infant behavioral and physiological attunement and on maternal wellbeing at 9 months of age. Methods In Study 1, mother–infant ( n = 67) behavioral and physiological attunement (i.e., co-regulation and RSA) were collected simultaneously each 20 s during face-to-face interaction. Mothers completed questionnaires about their dispositional mindfulness and mindful parenting. In Study 2, mother–infant dyads were randomly divided into a control ( n = 20) and an intervention group ( n = 29). The intervention group attended a 5-week mindfulness-based intervention. At T1 and T2, the same procedure described in Study 1 was applied and mothers reported about their wellbeing. Results Results showed that maternal mindfulness was associated with high physiological and behavioral attunement at 3 months and with more positive maternal behaviors and less stress at 9 months. Analysis evidenced a slight improvement in the intervention group in maternal dispositional mindfulness and a reduction in parenting stress at T2. Discussion Findings from both studies suggested that maternal mindfulness could represent a protective factor that could support mothers in fostering better dyadic interactions with their infants. The implementation of mindfulness-based interventions for mothers could have preventive and clinical implications.
Curiosity is an important social-emotional process underlying early learning. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement at kindergarten, ...with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage. Because characteristics of the early caregiving and physical environment impact the processes that underlie early learning, we sought to examine early environmental experiences associated with early childhood curiosity, in hopes of identifying modifiable contexts that may promote its expression.
Using data from a nationally representative sample of 4,750 children from the United States, this study examined the association of multi-level ecological contexts (i.e., neighborhood safety, parenting quality, home environment, and center-based preschool enrollment) on early childhood curiosity at kindergarten, and tested for moderation by socioeconomic status.
In adjusted, stratified models, children from lower-resourced environments (characterized by the lowest-SES tertile) manifested higher curiosity if they experienced more positive parenting, higher quality home environments, and if they lived in "very safe" neighborhoods.
We discuss the ecological contexts (i.e., parenting, home, and neighborhood environments) that are promotive of early childhood curiosity, with an emphasis on the role of the neighborhood safety and the "neighborhood built environment" as important modifiable contexts to foster early childhood curiosity in lower-resourced families.
IntroductionGlobally, around 10% of children are born preterm and are more at risk of negative developmental outcomes. However, empirical evidences and theoretical reasoning also suggest that ...premature birth can be a susceptibility factor, increasing sensitivity to the environment for better and for worse. Because available findings are controversial, with the current scoping review we will explore if, based on the available literature, preterm birth can be seen as an environmental sensitivity (ES) factor. In doing so, we will consider a series of moderating variables, including the level of prematurity, the type of environment and the outcome investigated. Methodological aspects, as the type of measures used and study design, will be considered.Methods and analysisThe scoping review will be conducted following the Joanna Briggs Institute Methodology guidelines. The report will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews checklist. We will perform the search between 15 January 2022 and 1 February 2022. Data will be chartered by independent reviewers.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval is not required, as primary data will not be collected. This scoping review will be the first to explore whether prematurity is associated with an increased ES. This review can have important implications for tailoring prevention and intervention programmes. Results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Temperament is an individual aspect that strictly affects infants and children engagement with the environment and it is supposed to play a role in the acquiring of new competences. Several studies ...focused on the possible influence of temperament in the process of language acquisition in early childhood reporting not consistent findings. Since maternal input is a variable that has been widely associated with infant language development this longitudinal study aimed to explore the role of the quality of maternal input in the temperament-language association. We hypothesized that the longitudinal association between early infant temperament and language production is moderated by the quality of maternal input during the first year of life. Infant temperament at 3 months and maternal linguistic input (lexical diversity and syntactic complexity) during spontaneous mother-infant interactions at 6, 9, and 12 months were assessed. Language competences were evaluated at the end of the second year: language production at 18 months with the CDI and child syntactic complexity at 24 months during spontaneous speech. Results showed significant moderating effects of syntactic complexity and lexical variability of maternal input at 6 and 9 months on the association of duration of orienting abilities and later language production. Infants with greater attentional abilities and with mothers who spoke to them with a more complex and variable input showed the better language outcomes. The association between infant distress to limitations and child language was not moderated by maternal input. No effects were found when considering the temperamental scale smile and laugher. Attentional control temperamental characteristics could help the infant to be more focus on maternal input throughout the first year of life and could consequently facilitate language development. Our findings underlined the necessity to explore infant development considering the interaction between individual and contextual factors.
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