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Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
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Interactions between mothers and infants: impact of maternal anxiety

Rosemary Nicol-Harper1, Allison G Harvey, Alan Stein

  • 1Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom.

Infant Behavior & Development
|February 13, 2007
PubMed

The aim of the study was to examine the impact of anxiety in the postnatal year on maternal contribution to mother-infant interaction. Participants were 32 mothers with high anxiety and 32 mothers with low anxiety, when their infants were aged 10-14 months. Mother-infant interaction was videotaped during a standardized play situation and coded blind to group status. High trait anxiety mothers showed less sensitive responsivity (p<.05) and reduced emotional tone (p<.05) during interaction. When participants scoring high in depressive symptomatology were removed for a subgroup analysis, the same pattern of results was obtained, suggesting that the observed differences in mother-infant interaction were due to group differences in anxiety.

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