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Associations Between Maternal Stress, Early Language Behaviors, and Infant Electroencephalography During the First Year of Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2020

Lara J. PIERCE ,
Emily REILLY  and
Charles A. NELSON III
Lara J. PIERCE
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Emily REILLY
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Charles A. NELSON III*
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Boston Children's Hospital Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1 Autumn St. 6th Floor Boston, MA, 02215 USA. 617-355-0401, Email: charles_nelson@harvard.edu
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Abstract

Associations have been observed between socioeconomic status (SES) and language outcomes from early childhood, but individual variability is high. Exposure to high levels of stress, often associated with low-SES status, might influence how parents and infants interact within the early language environment. Differences in these early language behaviors, and in early neurodevelopment, might underlie SES-based differences in language that emerge later on. Analysis of natural language samples from a predominantly low-/mid-income sample of mother-infant dyads, obtained using the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system, found that maternal reports of exposure to stressful life events, and perceived stress, were negatively correlated with child vocalizations and conversational turns when infants were 6 and 12 months of age. Greater numbers of vocalizations and conversational turns were also associated with lower relative theta power and higher relative gamma power in 6- and 12-month baseline EEG – a pattern that might support subsequent language development.

Keywords

Maternal stresssocioeconomic statusinfant language developmentLENAElectroencephalography (EEG)
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , July 2021 , pp. 737 - 764
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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