Infant Emotion Regulation: Biological Influences

最近在婴儿心理健康领域的研究一致发现，在情绪调节方面遇到困难的儿童更容易在社会关系中遇到问题，因此更容易发展为精神病理学。然而，许多问题仍然存在有关的机制，特别是生物和照顾者的影响，可能会牵连在适应性与适应不良的情绪调节的发展。建议的纵向研究是由一个多层次的模型，结合内在的（生物）和外在的（照顾者）的影响，情绪调节的发展，并假设这些因素相互作用，以预测婴儿的情绪调节和随后的社会情绪功能。因此，本研究的具体目标是探讨婴儿的生理和情绪调节、母亲的生理调节和早期依恋行为以及母婴依恋安全性之间的关系。母亲和婴儿之间的双向和动态的互动将在3，6和12个月大的挑战性的社会情况下进行调查。这项研究将产生关于婴儿和照顾者在生命的第一年之间的复杂交易的重要信息，其长期目标是确定针对高危婴儿母亲的干预计划中可能针对的特定行为。

Recent research in the area of infant mental health has consistently found that children who experience difficulties in the regulation of emotion are more likely to experience problems in social relationships and thus, are more prone to the development of psychopathology. However, many questions remain concerning the mechanisms, especially biological and caregiver influences that may be implicated in the development of adaptive versus maladaptive emotion regulation. The proposed longitudinal study is guided by a multi-level model of development of emotion regulation that incorporates both intrinsic (biological) and extrinsic (caregiver) influences and hypothesizes that these factors interact to predict both infant emotion regulation and subsequent socioemotional functioning. Thus, the specific goal of this proposal is to examine relations among physiological and emotion regulation in infants, physiological regulation and early attachment behaviors in mothers, and attachment security in mother-infant dyads. Bidirectional and dynamic interactions between mothers and infants will be investigated at 3, 6, and 12- months of age during challenging social situations. The study will yield important information on the complex transactions between infants and caregivers across the first year of life, with the long-term goal of identifying specific behaviors that could be targeted in an intervention program for mothers with high-risk infants.