The Combined Contributions of Neonatal Stress and Maternal Parenting Stress on Infant Language Development

• In Event: The Utility of Newborn Neurobehavioral Assessments for Early Prediction of Developmental Risk

Abstract

Background: Although stable individual differences in stress regulation have been reported in infancy/toddlerhood (Laurent et al., 2016), difficulties with the regulation of stress may present as early as the neonatal period (McGowan et al., 2022). Studies examining newborn neurobehavior have reported links between neonatal dysregulation, including increased signs of stress, and behavioral problems in childhood (Liu et al., 2010). Young children’s behavioral and linguistic functioning are closely related (Carpenter & Drabick, 2011), and words/gestures are thought to serve as vital tools that aid emotional and behavioral self-regulation (Basilo & Rodríguez, 2017; Vallotton & Ayoub, 2011). Consequently, neonatal stress may influence early language acquisition. Furthermore, caregiver factors are also related to child language development (Noel et al., 2008), yet no studies have evaluated the combined contributions of newborn signs of stress and maternal parenting stress on infant language development. Our study examined whether newborn signs of stress were related to multiple measures of infant language development and whether this association was moderated by levels of parenting stress.
Method: Participants include 123 children (53% female) and their mothers. Newborn signs of stress were measured using the Neonatal Newborn Neurobehavioral Scales (Lester & Tronick, 2004) at least 24 hours after birth by a trained experimenter. At 7-months, parenting stress was assessed via maternal report using the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1995). At 18-months, mothers completed the Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 2007), which measures children’s communicative gesturing, receptive vocabulary, and expressive vocabulary. Moderated multiple regression was conducted in SPSS using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013), and a model was generated for each language outcome. Child sex, gestational age, and maternal education were included as covariates.
Results: The Gesture model was significant, F(6, 110) = 2.5031, p = .03, R2 = 0.12, and there was a main effect of newborn stress (β = -.203, p = .04) that was superseded by the newborn stress by parenting stress interaction effect (β = .187, p = .04; Figure 1). The Receptive Vocabulary model was also significant, F(6, 107) = 2.759, p = .02, R2 = 0.14, and the only significant predictor was the interaction term (β = .200, p = .04; Figure 2). Collectively, these results indicate that fewer neonatal signs of stress predicted greater communicative gesturing and receptive vocabulary skills at 18-months, but only among children whose mothers reported lower levels of parenting stress. Although the Expressive Vocabulary model was significant, F(6, 107) = 2.224, p = .05, R2 = 0.12, the only significant predictor was child sex (β = .188, p = .05).
Discussion: Taken together, our findings not only uncover links between an aspect of neonatal neurobehavior and language acquisition during the second postnatal year, but they also illustrate that parenting stress and newborn signs of stress interact in their relation to early language development. Although further research examining predictors of newborn stress is needed, these results provide greater insight into the detrimental effects of stress on early language development and identify infants who may therefore require additional support.

Authors

• Madeleine Diane Bruce, University of Utah
  Presenting Author

• Sarah E. Maylott, Duke Univeristy

• Anna M Zhou, University of Utah

• Lee Raby, University of Utah

• Sheila E Crowell, University of Utah

• Liz Conradt, Duke University