Maternal Cocaine Use and Infant Behavior

Abstract

This study examined the impact of maternal cocaine use and associated risk factors such as polysubstance use, maternal functioning, and caregiving on affect regulation during infancy. Participants were 45 mother‐infant dyads (19 cocaine exposed and 26 control infants) recruited at birth. Observations and maternal reports of infant behavior were obtained at 2 and 7 months of age, along with measures of pre‐ and postnatal substance use, maternal functioning, and caregiving stability. Maternal cocaine use accounted for significant variance in infant positive affect at 2 months. Other substance use and gestational age predicted infant distress to novelty and arousal during developmental assessments. At 7 months, the impact of prenatal cocaine exposure on infant affect regulation was mediated by postnatal alcohol use and caregiving stability. These findings, if replicated, suggest that 1 pathway to later problem behavior reported among substance‐exposed children may be through early regulatory problems and the quality of postnatal caregiving.

Cocaine exposure and mother?toddler social play

“…Measures of social initiative that incorporate vocalizations may be more applicable to children 2 years of age or older. Our lack of group differences in child positive affect is consistent with findings from other large samples in the literature (Burns et al, 1997;Das Eiden et al, 2002;Ukeje et al, 2001). …”

“…Studies have found exposed infants to show deficits in alertness and arousal, as well as emotional expression (Alessandri, Sullivan, Imaizumi, & Lewis, 1993;Das Eiden, Lewis, Croff, & Young, 2002;Mayes, Bornstein, Chawarska, Haynes, & Granger, 1996;Mayes, Feldman, & Granger, 1997;Roumell, Abramson, Delaney, & Willey, 1997), but there has been relatively little research on this issue after 1 year of age. There also has not been adequate research examining how possible exposure deficits might be expressed in social interaction.…”

Physiological responses to social and cognitive challenges in 8‐year olds with a history of prenatal cocaine exposure

“…Although group differences in other prenatal substance use and various characteristics of the child and caregiving environment did not account for the findings in this study, there may have been differences in the caregiver-child relationships that contributed to these findings. Certainly, previous studies have found that mother-infant/child dyadic interactions have been more impaired in women who use cocaine during pregnancy with cocaine abusing women being more insensitive or less responsive in the care of their infants (Eiden et al, 2002Gottwald & Thurrman, 1994;Minnes et al, 2005). Caregiver mediation of arousal and direct instruction in self-regulation are important elements in the development of age-appropriate behavioral regulation skills (Ruff & Rothbart, 1996) and these instructions and learning experiences may mediate the interactive elements of the different arousal systems (Posner & Rothbart, 2006), resulting in alterations of physiological and behavioral responses to stressors.…”

“…Altered arousal states in cocaine-exposed children have been reported early in development (Alessandri, Sullivan, Imaizumi, & Lewis, 1993;Bard, Coles, Platzman, & Lynch, 2000;DiPietro, Suess, Wheeler, Smouse, & Newlin, 1995;Eiden, Lewis, Croff, & Young., 2002;Gottwald & Thurrman, 1994;Karmel, Gardner, & Freedland, 1996;Mayes, 2002;Mayes et al, 1996;Schuetze, Lawton, & Eiden, 2006). Later in childhood, poorer inhibitory control (Bendersky & Lewis, 1998;Bendersky, Gambini, Lastella, Bennett, & Lewis, 2003), quicker frustration reactivity (Dennis, Bendersky, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2006), and inefficiencies in sustained attention responses in the preschool (Bandstra, Morrow, Anthony, Accornero, & Fried, 2001) and school-age years (Savage, Brodsky, Malmud, Giannetta, & Hurt, 2005) have been identified.…”

Prenatal cocaine exposure and infant sleep at 7 months of age: The influence of the caregiving environment

“…The items are grouped into nine scales of Anxiety, Hostility, Somatization, Obsessive-Compulsive, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Depression, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation, and Psychoticism. These subscales have been reported to have high internal consistency and have been used in a large number of studies, including studies of maternal cocaine use ͑e.g., Eiden, Lewis, Croff, & Young, 2002;Singer et al, 1997͒.…”