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Developmental programming of happiness

Louis A Schmidt1,2,3, Paz Fortier1, Ayelet Lahat1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Developmental Psychobiology
|May 6, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) survivors show varied adult attention to happy faces based on childhood income, suggesting prenatal programming influences emotional responses and resilience.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Human Development

Background:

  • Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) may indicate suboptimal intrauterine conditions, offering insights into developmental programming.
  • Prenatal programming and differential susceptibility hypotheses can be integrated to understand long-term developmental trajectories.
  • Childhood rearing environments may moderate the effects of early life conditions on adult emotional processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if extremely low birth weight (ELBW) individuals exhibit different attention biases to emotional faces in adulthood based on childhood socioeconomic status.
  • To test the interplay between prenatal programming and differential susceptibility in shaping adult emotional attention.
  • To examine the association between attention biases and emotional problems in adulthood.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the oldest prospective cohort of extremely low birth weight (ELBW) survivors and normal birth weight (NBW) controls.
  • Assessed attention biases to positive and negative facial emotions in adulthood (ages 30-35).
  • Correlated adult attention biases with total family income during childhood (age 8).

Main Results:

  • Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) survivors showed heightened attention to happy faces when childhood family income was low (environmental match).
  • Conversely, ELBW survivors displayed reduced attention to happy faces when childhood family income was high (environmental mismatch).
  • Increased attention bias to happy faces correlated with a lower likelihood of adult emotional problems.

Conclusions:

  • Findings suggest that differential susceptibility to positive emotions may be programmed prenatally, with lasting effects into adulthood.
  • The study highlights the importance of integrating prenatal programming and differential susceptibility frameworks.
  • Results offer insights into the developmental origins of postnatal plasticity and resilience in individuals born extremely low birth weight.

Keywords:
attention biasdevelopmental programmingdifferential susceptibilityextremely low birth weighthappiness

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