title: Infant interest in their mother's face is associated with maternal psychological health.
abstract: Early experience can alter infants' interest in faces in their environment. This study investigated the relationship between maternal psychological health, mother-infant bonding, and infant face interest in a community sample. A visual habituation paradigm was used to independently assess 3.5-month old infants' attention to a photograph of their mother's face and a stranger's face. In this sample of 54 healthy mother-infant pairs, 57% of mothers (N = 31) reported symptoms of at least one of stress response to trauma, anxiety, or depression. Interest in the mother-face, but not stranger-face, was positively associated with the mother's psychological health. In regression analyses, anxiety and depression predicted 9% of the variance in looking to the mother-face. Anxiety was the only significant predictor within the model. No direct associations were found between mother-infant bonding and infants' face interest. Taken together, these findings indicate that infant's visual engagement with their mother's face varies with maternal symptoms of emotional distress, even within a community sample.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK.
authors: Rebecca
authors: R
authors: Jones
authors: Pauline
authors: P
authors: Slade
authors: Olivier
authors: O
authors: Pascalis
authors: Jane S
authors: JS
authors: Herbert
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment
keywords: Anxiety; Infant; Learning; Maternal wellbeing; Postpartum depression