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Poster #141 - Mothers’ Sensitivity to Infants Linked to Mother-Infant Cortisol Attunement During the Still-Face Paradigm

Thu, March 21, 9:30 to 10:45am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Biobehavioral attunement between mothers and their infants develops in infancy (Feldman. 2007). Research suggests that mothers attune to their infants behaviorally, emotionally, and physiologically, when they respond to their infants’ emotions in ways that meet infant’s needs. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis is one physiological system that matures throughout infancy and may be associated with mothers’ HPA response (Gunnar & Donzella, 2002). However, the mechanisms by which mothers’ HPA-axis synchronizes or desynchronizes with their infants’ stress response system are not well understood. Research has shown that mother and infant cortisol may covary at 6-months during stress-eliciting tasks like infant arm restraint (Hendrix, Stowe, Newport, & Brennen, 2017). Furthermore, maternal sensitivity may be linked to variation in mother-infant cortisol attunement during the Strange Situation around 1-year of age (Atkinson et al., 2013). The goal of this study was to examine the development of cortisol attunement between mothers and infants during the Still-Face Procedure (SFP) and the association between attunement and maternal sensitivity at 3- and 7-months postpartum.
One-hundred and fifty-four mother-infant dyads were recruited for this study. Mothers and infants were followed throughout the first year postpartum at 3, 7, and 14-months. Data for the present study utilized the 3 and 7-month behavioral and physiological data to investigate the attunement between mothers’ and infants’ cortisol reactivity during the SFP and how maternal sensitivity was linked to cortisol attunement. The SFP consisted of 3, 2-minute episodes (free-play, still-face, re-engagement). Mother and infant salivary cortisol was collected just prior to the SPF and 10- and 30-minutes post still-face. Maternal sensitivity to distress and non-distress was rated (1=no sensitivity, 4=high sensitivity) during a free-play task prior to the SFP and the free-play and re-engagement episodes of the SFP. Mothers’ scores for sensitivity were averaged at each time point (3-mos, M=3.08, Range=2.13-3.50; 7-mos, M=2.35, Range=1.20-3.00).
To model cortisol attunement, we used an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model in which attunement (synchrony) was modeled as the covariance between the residuals of cortisol (Mplus 8.0). This operationalization of attunement controls for between dyad actor and partner effects and focuses attention on the unique within dyad association between mother and infant. Full information maximum likelihood estimation was utilized due to missing cortisol values. We examined how maternal sensitivity predicted the covariance between the cortisol residuals at each time point (10- and 30-minutes post still-face) at both 3 and 7-months. Analyses indicated that maternal sensitivity predicted covariance between the cortisol residuals at 3 months, 10-minutes post still-face, β = -.45, p= .019 but not at 30-minutes post still-face, β = -.06, p= .792; overall model: chi-square(17) = 50.72, p < .001, CFI = .78, TLI = .77, RMSEA = .15, and did not predict covariance at 7-months at either time point, β = .10, p= .314 (3-mos) β = .04, p= .808 (7-mos); overall model: chi-square(17) = 47.25, p= < .001, CFI = .87, TLI = .86, RMSEA = .15. Preliminary results suggest that higher maternal sensitivity is associated with greater mother-infant cortisol attunement early in infancy (3-mos), but not later (7-mos).

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