Social Serve and Return

How is the early environment built into children’s bodies and brains?  Selected publications demonstrate that through social serve and return interactions with parents and caregivers, infants and children acquire information about the early environment, and make internal adaptations in accordance with external demands.  Internal adaptations, indexed in these publications by cortisol output, have consequence for physical health (i.e., asthma) as well as coordination of physiological and behavioral responses to challenge.  A theme of this work is interactive person x environment effects, and differential susceptibility to similar environments.

Selected ‘Social Serve and Return’ Publications:

• Moore, GA, Quigley, K, Voegtline, KM & DiPietro, JA. (2016). Don’t worry, be (moderately) happy: mothers’ anxiety and positivity during pregnancy independently predict lower mother-infant synchrony. Infant Behavior & Development, 42, 60-68. 

• Bair-Merritt, M., Voegtline, K.M., Ghazarian, S.R., Granger, D.A., Blair, C., Johnson, S.B. & the Family Life Project Investigators. (2015). Maternal intimate partner violence exposure, child cortisol reactivity, and child asthma. Child Abuse & Neglect, 48, 50-57.

• Blair, C., Ursache, A., Mills-Koonce, R., Stifter, C., Voegtline, K.M., Granger, D., & the Family Life Project Investigators. (2015). Emotional reactivity and parenting sensitivity interact to predict cortisol output in toddlers. Developmental Psychology, 51, 1271-1277.

• Voegtline, K. M., Stifter, C. A., & the Family Life Project Key Investigators (2010).  Late preterm birth, maternal symptomatology, and infant negativity. Infant Behavior & Development, 33, 545-554.

Physiological Serve and Return

Selected publications focus on evaluation of maternal-fetal signaling that Dr. Voegtline refers to as physiological serve and return of the prenatal period which precedes social interaction in the postnatal period referenced above.  This research highlights maternal signals to the fetus, such as adiposity, parity, or the spoken voice, as well as, fetal signals to the mother including motor activity. The time course of physiological signaling ranges from associations detected across gestational weeks (e.g., maternal obesity and frequency of fetal heart rate accelerations) to a lag of seconds (i.e., fetal motor bursts and maternal sympathetic activation).

Selected ‘Physiological Serve and Return’ Publications:

• Voegtline, K.M., Costigan, K.A., Henderson, J.L, & DiPietro, J.A. (2016). Fetal heart rate and motor development in overweight and obese pregnant women. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, 133, 103-107.

• DiPietro, J.A., Costigan, K.A., & Voegtline, K.M. (2015). Studies in fetal behavior: Revisited, renewed, and reimagined. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 80(3), 1-151.

• DiPietro, J.A., Voegtline, K.M., Costigan, K.A., Aguirre, F., Kivlighan, K.T., & Chen, P. (2013). Physiological reactivity of pregnant women to evoked fetal startle. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 75, 321-326.

• Voegtline, K.M., Costigan, K.A., Pater, H.A., & DiPietro, J.A. (2013) Near-term fetal response to maternal spoken voice. Infant Behavior and Development, 36, 526-533.

Fetal Origins of Sex Differences

Sex differences in the brain and behavior are well documented after birth; however, there is still much we do not know about the fetal origins of sex differences.  Selected publications target the influence of prenatal sex steroids as one mechanism of interest for differences in male and female fetal development and vulnerability to adverse prenatal exposures. 

Selected ‘Fetal Origins of Sex Differences’ Publications:

• Voegtline, KM, Costigan, KA, & DiPietro, JA. (2017). Maternal salivary testosterone in pregnancy and fetal neuromaturation. Developmental Psychobiology, 59, 822-831.

• DiPietro, J.A. & Voegtline, K.M. (2017). The gestational foundation of sex differences in development and vulnerability. Neuroscience, invited contribution to Special Issue on Early Adversity and Brain Development, 342, 4-20.

• Voegtline, K.M., DiPietro, J.A., Costigan, K.A., Kivlighan, K., & Henderson, J.L. (2013). Sex- specific effects of prenatal testosterone exposure on birth weight and weight gain in infancy. Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, 4, 280-284.

+ See all of Dr. Voegtline’s publications