Ginnell, L., O’Carroll, S., Ledsham, V., Jiménez Sánchez, L., Stoye, D. Q., Sullivan, G., Hall, J., Homer, N., Boardman, J. P., Fletcher-Watson, S., & Reynolds, R. M. (2022). Emotion regulation and cortisol response to the still-face procedure in preterm and full-term infants. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 141, 105760. doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105760
Babies born preterm experience more stress than usual in their early life. Some people born preterm experience challenges regulating their emotions that could be linked to early life stress. In the TEBC, we investigated stress response and emotion regulation in infants born at term and infants born preterm.
Babies took part in a structured play session with their caregiver when they were 9 months old (corrected age). The caregiver was asked to ignore their baby for a short period during this play session. Before and after the play session small amounts of saliva were collected from the baby and cortisol (a stress hormone produced in response to stress that has a wide range of important roles in the body and brain) was measured from this. The infants’ behaviours and emotions during the play session were measured from video recordings.
Preterm infants showed fewer negative emotions compared to term born infants, and their stress hormone levels took longer to recover from stress. Term born babies who showed more negative emotions had higher stress hormone levels, but emotions and stress hormones were not related to one another in preterm infants.
In future studies we intend to explore whether early differences in stress response and emotion regulation may be useful for predicting childhood development and health.
