Using Remote Sensing Technology to Assess Parent-Infant Interactions as a Mechanism Linking COVID-related Stress and Infant Neurobehavioral Functioning

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The young child’s ability to regulate stress sets the foundation for a host of developmental outcomes, and the parent-infant relationship is the primary context in which stress regulation capacities first develop. Prior research underscores how parents’ own stress may lead to disturbances in parent-infant co-regulation of stress. Given the immense disruptions to family life resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to understand the degree to which COVID-related stress may impact the parent-infant relationship and ultimately infants’ neurobehavioral outcomes. We posit here that (a) maternal stress due to the pandemic will be associated with disturbances in the mother-infant relationship, particularly with respect to mother-infant co- regulation of infant distress and (b) mothers’ experiences of COVID-related stress will have an indirect effect on infant neurobehavioral outcomes, in part, due to disturbances to the mother-infant relationship. We also aim to investigate risk factors (e.g., maternal depressive symptoms, substance use; infant negative emotionality) that might exacerbate such linkages, as well as protective factors (e.g., maternal social support, coping) that may attenuate them. We will partner with six sites from the NIH HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study- Phase 1 (New York University, Oregon Health Sciences University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Arkansas Children’s Research Institute) that will permit addressing the proposed aims among a geographically diverse sample of 240 families with infants between 6 and 18 months of age. To assess key constructs relevant to mother-infant relationship disturbance, we will use a novel multimodal sensing platform that captures infant vocalizations, stress physiology, and motor behavior, and we will employ machine learn approaches to these multimodal data to yield automated assessments of mother-infant co-regulation of infant distress. By combining assessments of (a) mothers’ COVID-related experiences, as well as maternal, family, and infant functioning, collected by the six HBCD sites via maternal reports and virtual visits and (b) mother-infant co-regulation of stress in home environments using remote multimodal sensing technology, the current study will provide unique opportunities for a nuanced and rich understanding of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on infants born during this unprecedented time.