Interaction Between Prenatal Maternal Stress and Autonomic Arousal in Predicting Conduct Problems and Psychopathic Traits in Children

Overview

Journal J Psychopathol Behav Assess

Publisher Springer

Specialty Psychology

Date 2017 Mar 14

PMID 28286370

Citations 15

Authors

Yu Gao

Yonglin Huang

Xiaobo Li

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Evidence has suggested that neurobiological deficits combine with psychosocial risk factors to impact on the development of antisocial behavior. The current study concentrated on the interplay of prenatal maternal stress and autonomic arousal in predicting antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits.

Methods: Prenatal maternal stress was assessed by caregiver's retrospective report, and resting heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were measured in 295 8- to 10-year-old children. Child and caregiver also reported on child's antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits.

Results: Higher prenatal maternal stress was associated with higher caregiver-reported antisocial and psychopathy scores, even after the concurrent measure of social adversity was controlled for. As expected, low heart rate and high RSA were associated with high antisocial and psychopathic traits. More importantly, significant interaction effects were found; prenatal stress was positively associated with multiple dimensions of psychopathic traits only on the conditions of low arousal (e.g., low heart rate or high RSA).

Conclusions: Findings provide further support for a biosocial perspective of antisocial and psychopathic traits, and illustrate the importance of integrating biological with psychosocial measures to fully understand the etiology of behavioral problems.

Citing Articles

Parasympathetic Nervous System Functioning Moderates the Associations between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Emotion Understanding Difficulties in Late Childhood.

Lynch S, Perlstein S, Ordway C, Jones C, Lembcke H, Waller R Children (Basel). 2024; 11(2).

PMID: 38397296 PMC: 10887086. DOI: 10.3390/children11020184.

Resting heart rate moderates the relationship between parental emotion socialization and callous-unemotional traits in children.

He J, Gao Y, Deng J, Wang M Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2023; 33(7):2353-2363.

PMID: 38145444 DOI: 10.1007/s00787-023-02338-x.

High resting heart rate protects against the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior: a birth cohort study.

Raine A, Choy O, Achenbach T, Liu J Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2023; 33(5):1597-1603.

PMID: 37351661 DOI: 10.1007/s00787-023-02247-z.

Maternal-fetal stress and DNA methylation signatures in neonatal saliva: an epigenome-wide association study.

Sharma R, Frasch M, Zelgert C, Zimmermann P, Fabre B, Wilson R Clin Epigenetics. 2022; 14(1):87.

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Relations between infant sleep quality, physiological reactivity, and emotional reactivity to stress at 3 and 6 months.

McLaughlin K, Chandra A, Camerota M, Propper C Infant Behav Dev. 2022; 67:101702.

PMID: 35158216 PMC: 9306017. DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101702.

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