Context of Maternal Intrusiveness During Infancy and Associations with Preschool Executive Function.

Abstract

The relation between maternal behavior and neurocognitive development is complex and may depend on the task context. We examined 5-month-old infant frontal EEG, maternal intrusiveness (MI) evaluated during two play contexts at 5 and 10 months, and a battery of executive function (EF) tasks completed at 48 months to evaluate if MI during infancy and infant neural function interacted to predict later cognition. Infant frontal EEG was a predictor of 4-year EF. MI during structured play at both 5 and 10 months predicted preschool EF, and MI during unstructured did not have a main effect on EF but showed a potential moderating effect of infant EEG on later EF. The pattern changed between ages, with MI during structured play at 5 months showing a positive association with age 4 EF, whereas MI during structured play at 10 months had a negative association with age 4 EF. We demonstrate differences in the context of maternal behavior used to predict childhood EF, highlighting the importance of considering parenting context in EF development.