Fetal Cortisol Exposure and Offspring Socioemotional Development

Glucocorticoids are a commonly proposed pathway through which offspring socioemotional development is shaped by the prenatal environment. However, studies have primarily assessed fetal cortisol exposure indirectly. We examine whether neonatal hair cortisol concentrations, an index of fetal cortisol exposure during the third trimester, are associated with early markers of offspring socioemotional development (negative affectivity and attention to affective faces). Participants included 107 mothers and their 6-month-old infants (59% female). Neonatal hair samples were collected shortly after birth. At 6 months, mothers rated their infants' negative affectivity with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ), and infants' attention to affective faces was assessed with a free-viewing eye-tracking task. Overall attention measures included total looking time and latency to faces (orienting speed); affect-biased attention measures included proportion of total looking time to emotional faces and orienting speed to the emotional faces relative to neutral faces. Infants with higher neonatal hair cortisol concentrations spent more time attending to faces when presented with negative emotions (i.e., during angry and sad trials but not during happy trials). No associations were found with negative affectivity, attention-orienting, or affect-biased attention. We provide novel evidence that endogenous fetal cortisol exposure relates to patterns of infant attention to affective faces, behaviors that have important implications for socioemotional development.