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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

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Investigating associations between maternal neural responsivity and infant developmental outcomes

Kathryn M Wall1, Francesca Penner1, Kathryn Armstrong1

  • 1Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine.

Developmental Psychology
|January 29, 2026
PubMed

Maternal responsiveness plays an important role in child development. Event-related potentials can be used to examine neural mechanisms underlying maternal responsivity. Here, associations between neural markers of maternal responsivity and five child development domains-cognitive, language, motor, adaptive behavior, and social-emotional development-were examined in 94 mothers (Mage = 29.19 years; 41% African American, 28% Caucasian, 19% Hispanic or Latina, 4% Asian or Asian American, 7% other or not reported) and their infants (Mage = 7.75 months; 60% female). Child development was assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Third Edition. Event-related potentials were recorded while mothers viewed infant faces and were used to generate profiles of maternal neural responsiveness. A latent profile analysis was used to examine patterns of maternal event-related potential responses to infant faces. A model with three profiles had the best fit statistics. Maternal profile membership was significantly related to infant social-emotional development such that a profile characterized by an attenuated early response at the N170 amplitude and a faster late response at the P300 latency was associated with increased infant social-emotional development scores. There were no significant associations between maternal profile membership and infant cognitive, language, motor, or adaptive behavior development. Findings support the importance of characterizing neural aspects of maternal responsiveness that may underlie infant social-emotional development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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