Intergenerational transfer of risk between mothers and children, based on mothers' childhood aggression and social withdrawal, was examined in an inner-city sample. Each of the 3 studies reported involved a subset of the 909 female participants in the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, initiated when the participants were of school age. Using medical records, Study 1 (n = 853) focused on prediction of teen motherhood, delivery complications during childbirth, multiparity, and close spacing of births. Study 2 (n = 428) examined pathways to school dropout and teen parenthood. Study 3 (n = 89) involved prediction of observed parent and child behavior from mothers' childhood characteristics. Mothers' childhood aggression was consistently predictive of negative outcomes in each area of intergenerational risk, especially when combined with social withdrawal and low levels of academic achievement. Education was protective: Mothers' years of schooling predicted positive outcomes.

Research examining cortisol dysregulation is seemingly contradictory with studies showing that both internalizing and externalizing behaviors are related to high and low cortisol. One extant theory to explain divergent findings in the stress literature is that both hypo-and hyper-arousal of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis may be present depending on time since onset of the stressor. This theory may extend to the onset of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Data from 96 youth participating in a longitudinal project were used to examine this possibility. Composite measures of internalizing and externalizing behaviors at both childhood and early adolescence were formed using mother and teacher reports. Multiple salivary cortisol samples were also collected over two consecutive days during early adolescence. Problematic behaviors were associated with cortisol and the direction of the association was dependent on amount of time passed since onset of the behaviors. When examined concurrently in adolescence, youth with more internalizing behaviors had higher morning cortisol; however, when examined longitudinally, youth with more internalizing behaviors in childhood had lower morning cortisol levels as adolescents. Youth with more externalizing behaviors in childhood had flattened diurnal cortisol rhythms as adolescents, and this finding persisted when examined in adolescence. Cortisol dysregulation was greatest in children with the most severe behavior problems. Findings support the theoretical model of blunting of the HPA axis over time. While the HPA axis may show hyperarousal when youth first display behaviors, long-term exposure may lead to a hypo-arousal of the HPA axis which culminates in a dysregulated diurnal rhythm.Keywords diurnal cortisol; internalizing behavior; externalizing behavior; blunted; hierarchical linear modeling Behavior problems are often debilitating with profound social, emotional, and psychological ramifications. Children who exhibit problematic behaviors often perform more poorly at school (Ansary and Luther, 2009;Aunola at al., 2000), are more socially rejected by their peers (Hymel et al., 1990;Pederson et al., 2007), have more strained relationships with their parents and siblings (Richmond and Stocker, 2006), and lower self-esteem (Aunola et al.,

Three experiments were conducted to isolate the effect of touch as a component of mother-infant interaction in the still-face (SF) paradigm and to determine the impact of adult touch on infant affect and attention. In Expt 1 it was established that the amount of maternal touching which occurred during the normal periods of the SF procedure was greater than 65 per cent for 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds. In Expts 2 (cross-sectional) and 3 (longitudinal), the SF no-touch period was compared with a SF period where mothers could touch their 3to 9-month-olds. Infants who received touch while their mothers were still-faced smiled more, grimaced less, and were more content relative to infants receiving the standard SF, no-touch procedure. Adult touch proved to be an interactive component which, in isolation, reduced the SF effect by eliciting infants' positive affect and directing their attention toward the mothers' hands. The relevance of this work for better comprehension of early infant social interaction and new interpretations of the SF effect are discussed.Recently, face-to-face interactions have been used to study the infant's social communication (Kaye, 1982), emotional expressions and responses to stressful episodes (Field, Vega-Lahr, Scafidi & Goldstein, 1986), and the development of social expectations (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). The investigation of interactions between a mother and her infant permits entry into an intimate dyad where the responses of both partners can be systematically examined. These interactions provide insight into communication patterns and infant cognitive competence. Although mothers usually present their infants with facial, vocal and tactile expressions during normal, free-play, face-to-face interactions, researchers typically analyse maternal facial and vocal behaviours and ignore the mothers' tactile behaviour. Indeed, models of early social interchange derived from such naturalistic

Most theoretical models of developmental psychopathology involve a transactional, bidirectional relation between parenting and children's behavior problems. The present study utilized a cross-lagged panel, multiple interval design to model change in bidirectional relations between child and parent behavior across successive developmental periods. Two major categories of child behavior problems, internalizing and externalizing, and two aspects of parenting, positive (use of support and structure) and harsh discipline (use of physical punishment), were modeled across three time points spaced 3 years apart. Two successive developmental intervals, from approximately age 7.5 to 10.5 and from 10.5 to 13.5, were included. Mother-child dyads (N = 138; 65 boys) from a lower income longitudinal sample of families participated, with standardized measures of mothers rating their own parenting behavior and teachers reporting on child's behavior. Results revealed different types of reciprocal relations between specific aspects of child and parent behavior, with internalizing problems predicting an increase in positive parenting over time, which subsequently led to a reduction in internalizing problems across the successive 3-year interval. In contrast, externalizing predicted reduced levels of positive parenting in a reciprocal sequence that extended across two successive intervals and predicted increased levels of externalizing over time. Implications for prevention and early intervention are discussed.