Browsing by Author "Schmidt, Louis A."

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Conducting Event-Related Potential (ERP) Research With Young Children: A Review of Components, Special Considerations, and Recommendations for Research on Cognition and Emotion
(Hogrefe Publishing Group, 2020-07) Brooker, Rebecca J.; Bates, John E.; Buss, Kristin A.; Canen, Mara J.; Dennis-Tiwary, Tracy A.; Gatzke-Kopp, Lisa M.; Hoyniak, Caroline; Klein, Daniel M.; Kujawa, Autumn; Lahat, Ayelet; Lamm, Connie; Moser, Jason S.; Petersen, Isaac T.; Tang, Alva; Woltering, Steven; Schmidt, Louis A.
Abstract. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of research studies employing event-related potential (ERP) techniques to examine dynamic and rapidly occurring neural processes with children during the preschool and early childhood years. Despite this, there has been relatively little discussion of the methodological and procedural differences that exist for studies of young children versus older children and adults. That is, reviewers, editors, and consumers of this work often expect developmental studies to simply apply adult techniques and procedures to younger samples. Procedurally, this creates unrealistic expectations for research paradigms, data collection, and data reduction and analyses. Scientifically, this leads to inappropriate measures and methods that hinder drawing conclusions and advancing theory. Based on ERP work with preschoolers and young children from 10 laboratories across North America, we present a summary of the most common ERP components under study in the area of emotion and cognition in young children along with 13 realistic expectations for data collection and loss, laboratory procedures and paradigms, data processing, ERP averaging, and typical challenges for conducting this type of work. This work is intended to supplement previous guidelines for work with adults and offer insights to aid researchers, reviewers, and editors in the design and evaluation of developmental research using ERPs. Here we make recommendations for researchers who plan to conduct or who are conducting ERP studies in children between ages 2 and 12 years, focusing on studies of toddlers and preschoolers. Recommendations are based on both data and our cumulative experience and include guidelines for laboratory setup, equipment and recording settings, task design, and data processing.
Infant negativity moderates trajectories of maternal emotion across pregnancy and the peripartum period
(Elsevier BV, 2023-01) Brooker, Rebecca J.; Mistry-Patel, Sejal; Kiel, Elizabeth J.; Liu, Shuling; Van Lieshout, Ryan J.; Schmidt, Louis A.; John-Henderson, Neha
Background. Although the effects of maternal behavior on the development of child emotion characteristics is relatively well-established, effects of infant characteristics on maternal emotion development are less well known. This gap in knowledge persists despite repeated calls for including child-to-mother effects in studies of emotion. We tested the theory-based postulate that infant temperamental negativity moderates longitudinal trajectories of mothers’ perinatal symptoms of anxiety and depression. Method. Participants were 92 pregnant community women who enrolled in a longitudinal study of maternal mental health; symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and again at infant age 4 months. A multimethod assessment of infants’ temperament-based negative reactivity was conducted at infant age 4 months. Results. Maternal symptoms of anxiety showed smaller postnatal declines when levels of infant negativity were high. Mother rated and observed infant negative reactivity was related to smaller postnatal declines in maternal anxiety, while infant negative reactivity, at the level of neuroendocrine function, was largely unrelated to longitudinal changes in maternal anxiety symptoms. Infant negativity was related to early levels, but largely unrelated to trajectories of maternal symptoms of depression. Limitations. Limitations of this work include a relatively small and low-risk sample size, the inability to isolate environmental effects, and a nonexperimental design that precludes causal inference. Conclusions. Findings suggest that levels of infant negativity are associated with differences in the degree of change in maternal anxiety symptoms across the perinatal period.