Infant visual habituation and parental psychological distress

Research is equivocal concerning the relationship between parental psycholo gical distress and infant cognitive functioning. Four potential limitations of the literature are addressed: reliance on mothers' but not fathers' psy chological 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 a nd both their mothers and fathers were assessed. Infants cognitive function ing was assessed using an infant-controlled habituation-recovery-dishabitua tion 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 di stress. Maternal and paternal psychological distress was related to female visual encoding abilities only. It was concluded that parental psychologica l distress might degrade parent-infant interactions. Characteristics of gir ls when faced with parents exhibiting psychiatric difficulties may exacerba te difficulties of parent-infant interactions, thereby hindering the full d evelopment of cognitive abilities involved in the process of habituation. A need exists to examine the relationship between parental psychological dis tress and infant visual attention separately for girls and boys.