Research shows that stress in pregnancy has powerful and enduring effects on many facets of child development, including increases in behavior problems and neurodevelopmental disorders. Theory of mind is an important aspect of child development that is predictive of successful social functioning and is impaired in children with autism. A number of factors related to individual differences in theory of mind have been identified, but whether theory of mind development is shaped by prenatal events has not yet been examined. In this study we utilized a sudden onset flood that occurred in Queensland, Australia in 2011 to examine whether disaster-related prenatal maternal stress predicts child theory of mind and whether sex of the child or timing of the stressor in pregnancy moderates these effects. Higher levels of flood-related maternal subjective stress, but not objective hardship, predicted worse theory of mind at 30 months (n=130). Further, maternal cognitive appraisal of the flood moderated the effects of stress in pregnancy on girls' theory of mind performance but not boys'. These results illuminate how stress in pregnancy can shape child development and the findings are discussed in relation to biological mechanisms in pregnancy and stress theory.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 69. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 October 2022.
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#732,912
of 29,653,920 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
#10
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Outputs of similar age
#12,975
of 332,908 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
#1
of 12 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 29,653,920 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 649 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.9. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 332,908 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 12 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
