Van den Bergh, B. R. H., & Mennes, M. (2006).The association between a mother’s anxiety during pregnancy and self-regulation during adolescence, Kind en Adolescent, 27 (1), 31-43.
Summary: 86 mother-child pairs were studied in a prospective study from the 12th week of pregnancy onwards. At the age of 14-15, 64 of these children completed three computerized cognitive tasks. ancovas indicated that compared with boys of mothers who experienced low to medium levels of anxiety during pregnancy, boys of highly anxious pregnant women reacted more impulsively in an encoding task and slower and more variably in a continuous performance task. In an inhibition task in which auditive signals indicated the responses they had to inhibit, no group differences in performance were found. It is assumed that these adolescents experience specific self-regulation problems due to prenatal programming. The literature and clinical implications are discussed briefly.
