BPsych (Honours)

PhD Candidate, School of Psychology

Contact details for Ms Judith Warner j.warner@griffith.edu.au

Research topic title

The Effects of Prenatal Maternal Stress and Mother-Infant Attachment on the Physiological Stress Responses of Infants.

Description

This research will extend on prior psycho-physiological research by examining the relationships between prenatal maternal stress, the care-giver infant relationship, and infant reactivity to stressors during the first year of life (measured by cortisol, a biological marker of stress). Researchers have suggested that suboptimal prenatal and postnatal environments can permanently alter the way an infant responds to stress, resulting in a reduced ability to regulate the stress system when activated. These difficulties with regulation, in turn, may form the foundation for the development of behavioural and emotional problems. As timing of prenatal maternal stress may be particularly important in terms of deleterious outcomes for the developing foetus, this study will examine maternal stress beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy as it is known to be a period of rapid cell division and organ development, when the foetus is particularly susceptible to the environment.

Supervisor

Associate Professor Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck