Latent Profiles of Maternal Neural Response to Infant Emotional Stimuli: Associations with Maternal Sensitivity

• In Event: 1-073 - The Neural Basis of Parenting: Event-Related Potentials and Maternal Behavior

Integrative Statement

The ability to accurately interpret and respond to different infant emotional expressions, particularly distress, is an important element of sensitive parenting (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Leerkes, Blankson, & O’Brien, 2009). Accordingly, numerous event-related potential (ERP) studies have examined mothers’ neural responses to infant emotional expressions in order to understand how patterns of emotion processing may contribute to parenting behavior (e.g., Bernard, Simons, & Dozier, 2015; Groh & Haydon, 2017). However, although several studies indicate that attenuated neural response to infant distress is associated with risk factors for insensitive parenting (Rodrigo et al., 2011; Rutherford, Graber, & Mayes, 2016), few studies have linked maternal neural activity to observed parent-child interaction. Maternal ERP studies also typically analyze early and late stages of processing separately, but it is possible that there are latent profiles characterizing maternal neural response to infant stimuli across stages of processing that may describe mothers’ patterns of neural response more completely and with less error than manifest ERP components measured at one time only. The present study aimed to (1) identify profiles of maternal ERP response to infant emotional expressions across early and late ERP components, and (2) examine whether the likelihood of being classified in a given profile was associated with parenting behavior.

Participants included 86 mothers of infants (6 to 12 months old). Mother-infant dyads were filmed in play and infant distress-eliciting tasks, which were coded for dimensions of sensitive parenting (i.e., positive regard, sensitivity to non-distress, nurturance to distress). Mothers’ EEG activity was recorded as they viewed and categorized images of infant faces showing crying, laughing, and neutral expressions. Two ERP components, the P200 (reflecting early attention) and late positive potential (LPP; reflecting sustained attention to emotionally relevant stimuli), were measured for each expression.

Latent Profile Analysis identified an “attenuated (to distress)” profile and an “enhanced (to distress)” profile (See Figure 1). Mixed-model ANOVAs showed significant profile X expression type interactions for each component indicating that the magnitude of the differences in amplitude between expression types varied as a function of profile membership, P200: F(2,79) = 18.81, p < 0.001; LPP: F(2,79) = 23.60, p < 0.001. Specifically, the attenuated profile was characterized by no differentiation between emotional expressions at the P200 (p = 0.08) and a larger response to laughing than crying expressions at the LPP (p = 0.003). In contrast, the enhanced profile was characterized by enhanced response to crying relative to laughing at both the P200 and LPP (p < 0.001). Regression analyses demonstrated that the likelihood of being assigned to the attenuated profile predicted multiple dimensions of sensitive parenting, controlling for composite risk and maternal depressive symptoms. Specifically, increased likelihood of being classified in the attenuated profile predicted reduced positive regard, sensitivity, and nurturance (See Table 1).

Our results suggest that early perception of and sustained attention to infant distress may be important for a range of sensitive maternal behaviors, and that latent maternal ERP profiles may be an effective means of identifying mothers at risk for insensitive caregiving.

Authors

• Sierra Kuzava, Stony Brook University
  Presenting Author

• Allison Frost, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Galia Nissim, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brady Nelson, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin Bernard, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author