Infant visual habituation and parental psychological distress

Research is equivocal concerning the relationship between parental psychological distress and infant cognitive functioning. Four potential limitations of the literature are addressed: reliance on mothers' but not fathers' psychological distress, use of categorical measures of psychological distress, use of standardized measures of infant cognitive functioning, and failure to take into account potential gender differences. Ninety-nine twin pairs and both their mothers and fathers were assessed. Infants cognitive functioning was assessed using an infant-controlled habituation-recovery-dishabituation task. Maternal and paternal psychological distress was assessed using the Symptom Check List-90-Revised. No gender differences were obtained for infant visual information-processing abilities or parental psychological distress. Maternal and paternal psychological distress was related to female visual encoding abilities only. It was concluded that parental psychological distress might degrade parent-infant interactions. Characteristics of girls when faced with parents exhibiting psychiatric difficulties may exacerbate difficulties of parent-infant interactions, thereby hindering the full development of cognitive abilities involved in the process of habituation. A need exists to examine the relationship between parental psychological distress and infant visual attention separately for girls and boys.