# Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Mechanisms Linking Unpredictable Maternal Care to Risk for Socioemotional Problems

> **NIH NIH F32** · BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL · 2021 · $68,310

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The caregiving environment constitutes one of the most significant sources of early life experience for children.
Early interactions with caregivers provide essential inputs that shape the developing brain and lay the
foundation for children’s future social, emotional, and intellectual functioning. While an extensive body of work
highlights the quality of early caregiver-child interactions (including caregiver sensitivity and responsiveness)
as a key contributor to child health and development, emerging evidence suggests that the predictability of
these interactions may also play a powerful role in shaping child development, especially within socioemotional
domains. The strongest evidence for this claim comes from rodent models, which increasingly associate
unpredictable maternal behavior with pervasive socioemotional impairments in rodent pups, and these
impairments appear dependent on alterations in neural circuitry governing cognitive and emotional function
(i.e., prefrontal-hippocampal-amygdala circuits). Recent behavioral evidence from human research also
supports associations between unpredictable maternal behavior and impaired socioemotional functioning in
children, including elevated risk for externalizing problems and reduced prosociality. However, the
mechanisms underlying these associations are not well-understood in children. The proposed studies will
integrate insights from animal and human models to directly address this gap in the literature and test potential
neurodevelopmental and cognitive mechanisms linking unpredictable maternal care and the emergence of
socioemotional problems in young children. Aim 1 will use existing longitudinal data from an investigation of
children followed from birth to age 3 to test whether alterations in resting brain function, namely EEG band
power and coherence in regions supporting executive function and social behavior, underlie the associations
between unpredictable maternal behavior and children’s risk for subsequent externalizing problems. Aim 2 will
involve an experimental test of whether deficits in neural and behavioral markers of executive function also
contribute to associations between unpredictable maternal behavior and both externalizing problems and
reduced prosociality in 4- to 5-year-old children. Together, findings will provide new insight into mechanisms
linking unpredictable early caregiver inputs and socioemotional problems and may provide critical new
direction to prevention and intervention efforts aimed at promoting healthy socioemotional development in
children. This award will provide the candidate, who has a strong background in developmental psychology,
with training in neurobiology and the use of EEG and ERP methods that will facilitate her transition into an
independent research career.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10311809
- **Project number:** 1F32HD106599-01
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** Kelli Lynn Dickerson
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $68,310
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-01 → 2022-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10311809

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10311809, Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Mechanisms Linking Unpredictable Maternal Care to Risk for Socioemotional Problems (1F32HD106599-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10311809. Licensed CC0.

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