Concern exists that a constellation of negative maternal emotions during pregnancy generates persistent negative consequences for child development. Maternal reports of anxiety, pregnancy-specific and nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were collected during mid-pregnancy and at 6 weeks and 24 months after birth in a sample of healthy women with low risk pregnancies. Developmental assessment and cardiac vagal tone monitoring were administered to 94 children at age 2. Higher levels of prenatal anxiety, nonspecific stress, and depressive symptoms were associated with more advanced motor development in children after postnatal control for each psychological measure; anxiety and depression were also significantly and positively associated with mental development. Mild to moderate levels of psychological distress may enhance fetal maturation in healthy populations.

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Although high circulating levels of glucocorticoids are associated with impaired cognitive performance in adults, less is known about this relationship in infancy. Furthermore, because studies have relied on acute cortisol measures in blood plasma or saliva, interpretation of the results may be difficult as acute measures may in part reflect emotional responses to testing procedures. In this study we examined whether hair cortisol, an integrated measure of HPA axis functioning, predicted performance of nursery-reared (NR) infant rhesus monkeys (N=32) on Piagetian object permanence tasks. Testing of NR infants began at 19.8±2.2 (mean±SE) days of age and continued for the next several months. Hair cortisol concentrations from the 32 NR monkeys were compared to those of 20 mother-peer-reared (MPR) infants. Hair was shaved at day 14, allowed to re-grow, and obtained again at month 6, thus representing integrated cortisol over a 5.5-month period of time. NR and MPR infants did not differ in month 6 hair cortisol values (t (50) =0.02, p=0.98). Linear regression revealed that hair cortisol predicted object permanence performance in the NR infants. Infants with higher hair cortisol reached criterion at later ages on the well (p<0.01), screen (p<0.05), and A-not-B (p<0.05) tasks and required more test sessions to complete the well (p<0.01) and screen tasks (p<0.05). These data are the first to implicate hair cortisol as a reliable predictor of early cognitive performance in infant macaque monkeys.

In human and chimpanzee infants, neonatal rightward supine head orientation bias predicts later right hand use preference. In an evolutionarily older primate species such as the rhesus monkey, a left hand preference has been reported, but there are no data on head orientation biases. Supine head orientation bias was measured experimentally in 16 rhesus monkey neonates and compared with prone head orientation bias as well as with various measures of hand use preference. A group-level leftward supine head bias was found that corresponded to greater activity in the left hand while supine; however, supine head orientation did not predict later hand preference as measured by reaching or manipulation on a coordinated bimanual task. These data suggest that a trajectory for handedness in rhesus monkeys may be different from that of humans and chimpanzees.