“What is the Effect of Maternal Stress During Pregnancy on the Cognitive Development of Children?”

I need a 10 page paper (without counting the reference and title page) on the following subject: “What is the Effect of Maternal Stress During Pregnancy on the Cognitive Development of Children?”

I attached a sample of the method section, results and discussion. 

The method section will include three sections: Participants, Measures, and Procedure.  If proposing survey research, you must select reliable/valid measures and these measures must be attached to your submission.  Resources for locating measures will be available in the course and you may also contact your instructor for guidance.  If proposing an experiment, a detailed research protocol should be included. 

The project results section should include a description of which statistics you will use to test your hypothesis.  The discussion section should include possible outcomes as well as possible limitations that you might encounter.  

The final paper will include all sections of the paper including the title page, abstract, literature review with hypothesis, method section, project results, discussion, references, IRB application, and any measures that you plan to include.  The final proposal should include application of the core value- Respect. 

The literature review is already done and I have attached that as well. 

I will do the IRB application. 

SAMPLE
1

Method

Participants

Participants will be 150 undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses recruited from a private Catholic university in the southeast.

Materials

Participants will complete a demographic and relationship biography questionnaire. The demographic questionnaire may be found in Appendix B. The love and relationship biography includes measures of commitment (Lund, 1985), length of relationship, and frequency of contact with partner. The biography also assesses how often the participant has been in love and if the participant’s current relationship is sexual. This measure may be found in Appendix C.

Relationship satisfaction.
S. Hendrick’s (1988) Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS) will be used to examine relationship satisfaction. The RAS is a seven-item scale that provides an overall measure of relationship satisfaction. This scale is widely used in the close relationship literature and has demonstrated high reliability in other studies. The RAS may be found in Appendix D.

Love styles.
C. Hendrick and Hendrick’s (1998) Love Attitudes Scale: Short form will also be included in Study 3. This scale has six subscales with four items each. The subscales are Ludus (game-playing love), Storge (friendship love), Eros (passionate love), Mania (possessive, dependent love), Pragma (practical love), and Agape (altruistic love). The LAS may be found in Appendix E.

Respect
. S. Hendrick and Hendrick’s (2006) Respect Scale will be used to measure respect toward partner and perceived respect from partner. Each of these two subscales consists of six items. The scale may be found in Appendix F.

Procedure

Participants will receive an online link through Qualtrics. Prior to completing the packet of questionnaires, participants will read and agree to the implied consent form (See Appendix A). Participants will complete the questionnaires which will be in a fixed order. Once the participants are finished, they will be given a written debriefing form which includes contact information for counseling centers on campus.

2

Literature Review: “What is the Effect of Maternal Stress During Pregnancy on the Cognitive Development of Children?”

Jasmine Hrizuk

Saint Leo University

Literature review

Studies show that when a mother is stressed, anxious or depressed during pregnancy, there is a high risk of the child born having a range of disorders which include impaired cognitive development, ADHD, emotional disorder, and conduct disorder (Glover, 2011). Glover added that the mechanism behind this is because the placenta’s function has been altered, allowing more cortisol, a stress hormone, to move through to the fetus. This literature review examines the relationship between stress during the prenatal and perinatal period and the cognitive development of the child after birth (Simcock, 2016). Additionally, it will review whether different kind of stress results in different kinds of disorders among children.

Some studies have associated genetic differences and epigenetic regulatory to moderating and mediating the relationship between stress during pregnancy and the cognitive development of the child (Grizenko, 2015). Grizenko’s (2015) objectives were to control external factors like parenting style and maternal smoking by intra-familial design and investigate the interaction of gene and environment. In the study, a large sample of children with ADHD was genotyped to examine the interaction between the gene and the environment. Despite the findings that there was a relationship between prenatal stress and the increased risk of children having ADHD, it was also evident that the relationship may be mediated through the DRD4 genotype (Grizenko, 2015). This was supported by Van den Bergh et al (2017) in their studies on the influence of prenatal health in pregnancy. Van den Bergh suggested that more studies should be conducted on the way genetic difference and epigenetic regulatory mechanism plays a role in mediating and moderating the relationship (Van den Bergh, 2017). Ronald et al (2011) was also in support and said that studies of gene-environment interactions may provide more knowledge about causation in both the context of Child genotype versus environment interaction and maternal genotype versus environment interaction (Ronald, 2011). Natural disasters are known to be natural occurring major adverse events but can also be used in studying pre maternal stress in children health and cognitively (King, 2012). King, et al (2012) studied the behavioural and cognitive development of children and animals in Utero whose parents were exposed to January 1998 Quebec Ice Storm. The 1998 ice storm had a high possibility of coursing stress to the people and animals since it was rated as one of the most costly and worst natural disasters since it caused deaths, destruction of powerline and economic constraints (King, 2012). The results from the study of women who were pregnant at the time of the storm and the children show that there was an effect on the children cognitive performance. The results also show that the effects of stress on children can be long term since the effects could be seen in children in their early adolescence stages. Austin et al (2017) were also in support of prenatal stress as a result of natural calamities affecting children’s cognitive and overall health development. They carried out a test on mothers who were affected by floods in Queensland and the results. The results on the cognitive development predicted gross motor score, with poor motor development associated with negative appraisal and with great motor score predicted by PTSD symptoms (Austin, 2017). Some studies have also found that the cognitive development of children as a result of prenatal stress is affected by the sex of the child (Cao, 2014). however other studies contradict saying that there is no difference in children cognitive development according to sex (Sandman, 2012).

The literature reviews results are in agreement with the hypothesis that there is a strong relationship between stress during the prenatal period and the cognitive development of the child after birth. However, most researchers suggest that more research should be done to determine the gene-environment factor and whether the strength of the relationship is different according to sex (Cao, 2014). How to research hypothesis for this will therefore be “Maternal stress during pregnancy has significant effects on the cognitive development of the child.”

References

Austin, M. P., Christl, B., McMahon, C., Kildea, S., Reilly, N., Yin, C., … & King, S. (2017). Moderating effects of maternal emotional availability on language and cognitive development in toddlers of mothers exposed to a natural disaster in pregnancy: The QF2011 Queensland Flood Study. Infant behavior and development, 49, 296-309.

Cao, X., Laplante, D. P., Brunet, A., Ciampi, A., & King, S. (2014). Prenatal maternal stress affects motor function in 5½‐year‐old children: Project Ice Storm. Developmental psychobiology, 56(1), 117-125.

Glover, V. (2011). The effects of prenatal stress on child behavioural and cognitive outcomes start at the beginning. Encyclopedia on early childhood development, 1-5.

Grizenko, N., Fortier, M. È., Gaudreau-Simard, M., Jolicoeur, C., & Joober, R. (2015). The effect of maternal stress during pregnancy on IQ and ADHD symptomatology. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 24(2), 92.

King, S., Dancause, K., Turcotte‐Tremblay, A. M., Veru, F., & Laplante, D. P. (2012). Using natural disasters to study the effects of prenatal maternal stress on child health and development. Birth Defects Research Part C: Embryo Today: Reviews, 96(4), 273-288

Ronald, A., Pennell, C. E., & Whitehouse, A. J. (2011). Prenatal maternal stress associated with ADHD and autistic traits in early childhood. Frontiers in psychology, 1, 223.

Sandman, C. A., Davis, E. P., Buss, C., & Glynn, L. M. (2012). Exposure to prenatal psychobiological stress exerts programming influences on the mother and her fetus. Neuroendocrinology, 95(1), 8-21.

Simcock, G., Kildea, S., Elgbeili, G., Laplante, D. P., Stapleton, H., Cobham, V., & King, S. (2016). Age‐related changes in the effects of stress in pregnancy on infant motor development by maternal report: The Queensland Flood Study. Developmental psychobiology, 58(5), 640-659.

Van den Bergh, B. R., van den Heuvel, M. I., Lahti, M., Braeken, M., de Rooij, S. R., Entringer, S., … & Schwab, M. (2017). Prenatal developmental origins of behavior and mental health: The influence of maternal stress in pregnancy. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

Discussion

The purpose of this study will be to determine if family structure and parental support significantly affects academic performance and social behaviors such as drug and alcohol use and delinquent and deviant behavior.

Possible Outcome #1: Persons raised in single parent families perceive their parents as less supportive in comparison to persons from two parent families. The proposed reason for this result is that single parents have multiple roles (household, financial, educational, motivational, and emotional) to balance without the help of a partner.

Possible Outcome # 2: Persons from both family structures will perform better academically, will use less drugs and alcohol and exhibit less delinquent and deviant behavior, if their parent or parents are more supportive. This result will emphasize that it is in fact parental support and not the absence of a parent that is responsible for lower academic level, and more frequency of drug and alcohol abuse, and delinquent and deviant behavior.

One possible limitation of this study will be the convenient sample size that will be used. The sample size will not be representative of the population since it will possibly consist of primarily female students pursuing a psychology major. Thus, this may affect the effect size for gender. Another possible limitation of the study will be participants providing fictitious information. This may especially occur with questions concerning drug and alcohol use and delinquent and deviant behavior especially if the participant is not of legal age.

Previous research has determined that family structure affects academic performance and social behavior. However, as this study may possibly show, is that parental support plays a major role in a person’s development. Future studies can take into effect not only how persons perceive their parent’s support level but also how the parent’s perceive their own parental support as well.

Results

Descriptive Analyses including means, standard deviations and frequencies will be calculated and shown in Table 1.

Pearson’s r correlation will be calculated between how an individual feels about their gender as it relates to gender awareness. There will be sufficient evidence shown in Table 2 to conclude a strong, positive relationship to exist between how a person feels about their gender matching their anatomy as being negatively correlated to gender awareness (r=_____); while a strong, positive correlation will exist between how a person feels about their gender opposite their anatomy will be positively correlated towards more awareness (r=_____).

Pearson’s r correlation will be calculated between how an individual feels about their gender as it relates to sexuality. There will be sufficient evidence shown in Table 3 to conclude a strong, positive relationship to exist between how a person feels about their gender matching their anatomy as being positively correlated to heterosexuality (r=_____); while a strong, negative correlation will exist between how a person feels about their gender opposite their anatomy will be negatively correlated to heterosexuality (r=_____) and trend more towards bisexuality.

Pearson’s r correlation will be calculated between how an individual feels about their gender as it relates to disclosure. There will be sufficient evidence shown in Table 5 to conclude a strong, positive relationship to exist between how a person feels about their gender matching their anatomy as being positively correlated to disclosing gender identity (r=_____); while a strong negative relationship will exist between how a person feels about their gender opposite their anatomy will be less likely to disclose their true gender identity (r=_____).

A simultaneous regression analysis will be calculated to examine gender awareness, sexuality, individual male and female gender identity, gender stereotypes, and a lack of willingness to disclose gender identity as predictors of depression in eccentric individuals. It is expected that awareness, individual male and female gender identity and a lack of willingness to disclose gender identity will be significant predictors of depression (t = , β= ___, p= ___).