The Roles of Observed Maternal Sensitivity and Infant Feeding Cues in Predicting Infant Weight

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Health, Growth, Injury

Abstract

Pediatric obesity is a health concern in the US, even among infants and young children (Zheng et al., 2018). Thus, prevention efforts are much needed during infancy. Maternal sensitivity to child’s feeding cues is an important factor for child obesity prevention as mothers who are less sensitive to the child’s cues may overfeed their child, resulting in higher weight status (e.g., Hurley et al., 2011). Maternal sensitivity to child’s cues has been extensively examined in older children, with limited studies conducted during infancy. Recent work suggests that infants do signal engagement and disengagement cues during feeding (Shloim et al., 2018). Nonetheless, these studies did not capture the dynamic nature of mother-infant behaviors during feeding, as mothers may be more responsive to an infant with a clear cue than an infant with an ambiguous cue. Thus, the current study examined 1) the association between observed maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues and observed infant clarity of cues and 2) whether observed maternal sensitivity interacts with observed infant clarity of cues to predict infant weight-for-length z-score (WLZ).
We leveraged 201 videotaped naturalistic feeding interactions from a longitudinal study with mother-infant dyads at age 4 months. We used the NCAST feeding scale to code for maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues ( = .70) and infant clarity of cues (= .72). Infant anthropometry was measured by trained research assistants and WLZ was derived using WHO standards (WHO, 2008). The infant cohort was 51% male and mean WLZ was 0.15 (SD = 0.9). The maternal cohort was with 28% Hispanic or non-white and mean age was 31.7 years (SD = 4.9). Mean maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues was 14.2 (SD = 1.2; Range: 9 -16). Mean infant clarity of cues was 11.7 (SD = 1.8; Range = 5 -15).
In preliminary analyses, maternal age, infant age, and infant sex were not associated with observed maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues and infant clarity of cues, all p’s > .05. In bivariate correlational analyses of observed mother and infant behaviors, higher maternal sensitivity to child cues was associated with higher infant clarity of cues (r = 0.38, p < .001). Results of linear regression analysis testing the interaction of maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues and infant clarity of cues in predicting infant WLZ are shown in Table 1. Maternal sensitivity to infant’s cues interacted with infant clarity of cues to predict infant WLZ (Figure 1).
At age 4 months, we found that mothers and infants are already responding to each other during feeding. In addition, we found that when infants provided a clearer cue (i.e., high infant clarity of cues), mothers were more responsive and this resulted in lower infant WLZ than when infants provided ambiguous cues (i.e., low infant clarity of cues). These findings suggest that when infants provide more ambiguous feeding cues, mothers may overfeed their infants which then results in higher infant weight. Future research is needed to systematically assess the directionality of maternal and infant behaviors in explaining infant WLZ.

Authors

• Cin Cin Tan, University of Toledo
  Presenting Author

• Noelle Herzog, University of Toledo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adelyn Sherrard, The University of Toledo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Lumeng, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author