Background Obesity constitutes a crucial health issue during preschool period and has an impact on children regardless their ethnic backgrounds. The purpose of the study was to examine the self-efficacy perceptions of mothers and potential differences and correlations with dietary behaviour and physical activity of their preschool children in Finland. Materials and Methods: The sample for this...

Children with developmental delay are at increased risk for behaviour problems, but little is known about risk and resilience factors. Previous research has established links between maternal sensitivity and behaviour problems in typically developing children, but no studies have examined maternal sensitivity in the development of behaviour problems in children with developmental delay. In this...

BACKGROUND There is substantial evidence that maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with both antisocial behaviour and symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring. However, it is not clear whether maternal smoking during pregnancy is independently associated with antisocial behaviour or whether the association arises because antisocial behaviour and ADHD c...

Previous studies of the effects of parity and social isolation on maternal behaviour in guinea pigs were either concerned with subsets of maternal behaviour or based their conclusions on small data sets. The aim of the present experiment was to give a more detailed and complete description of maternal behaviour, including the effects of the sex of the pups on maternal behaviour. Three groups of...

Temperament influences the expression of maternal behaviour in sheep under experimental field conditions. We investigated whether maternal behaviour between ewes selected for a calm or nervous temperament is independent from environmental conditions. In addition, the level of maternal behaviour expressed by mothers is correlated with the concentration of hormones during the peripartum period. T...

Past studies found three types of infant coping behaviour during Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm (FFSF): a Positive Other-Directed Coping; a Negative Other-Directed Coping and a Self-Directed Coping. In the present study, we investigated whether those types of coping styles are predicted by: infants’ physiological responses; maternal representations of their infant’s temperament; maternal inte...

OBJECTIVES HIV and psychiatric disorders are prevalent and often concurrent. Childbearing women are at an increased risk for both HIV and psychiatric disorders, specifically depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Poor mental health in the peripartum period has adverse effects on infant development and behaviour. Few studies have investigated the relationship between maternal PTSD...