Highlights Investigated attention in full-term and preterm 5-month-olds and their mothers. Compared attention to persons and objects. Evaluated role of maturity in orienting and responding to attention. Infant attention to persons versus objects was related to maturity. Infant and maternal responsiveness were related to maturity.

HighlightsConsistency in group level (continuity) and individual level (stability) was examined longitudinally for caregiving principles (structure and attunement) and cognitions (categorical thinking, perspectivist thinking, complexity of thought) in mothers of preterm and term infants from birth to 5 months old.Attunement was continuous and stable in mothers of preterm and term infants.Structure was continuous in both groups but stable only in mothers of term infants.Complexity of thought was continuous in both groups, perspectivist thinking increased in both groups but only for first-time mothers, and categorical thinking increased only in mothers of preterm infants.Categorical thinking, perspectivist thinking, and complexity of thought were stable in mothers of both preterm and term infants.

Disgust for contaminating objects (core disgust), immoral behaviors (moral disgust) and unsavory others (interpersonal disgust), have been assumed to be closely related. It is not clear, however, whether different forms of disgust are mediated by overlapping or specific neural substrates. We report that 10 patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) avoided behaviors that normally elicit interpersonal disgust (e.g. using the scarf of a busker) less frequently than healthy and brain-damaged controls, whereas they avoided core and moral disgust elicitors at normal rates. These results indicate that different forms of disgust are dissociated neurally. We propose that the vmPFC is causally (and selectively) involved in mediating interpersonal disgust, shaping patterns of social avoidance and approach.

To understand the role of experience in parenting beliefs about caring for infants, we examined the parenting beliefs of pregnant women who were expecting their first child with those of pregnant women who already had at least one other child. A culturally diverse sample of 550 British and Italian women completed self-report measures evaluating their beliefs about the value of attunement and structure in caregiving, parenting self-efficacy, and home chaos. Psychometric evaluation confirmed the two-factor structure of the Baby Care Questionnaire (BCQ) for measuring attunement and structure but did not support configural invariance across the different samples. Beliefs about attunement and structure were related to parenting experience: pregnant women who already had at least one other child reported stronger beliefs in attunement, whereas pregnant women expecting their first child reported stronger beliefs in structure. Regression analyses revealed that the associations between parenting beliefs and experience remained when controlling for country, age, and education. Despite the limitations imposed by the lack of configural invariance, this cross-sectional, cross-cultural study constitutes an important first step in examining the relations between parenting experience and parenting beliefs during pregnancy.