Infrared Thermal Imaging (ITI), a Non-invasive Window Into Early Emotion Regulation: A Systematic Review.

Investigating early emotion regulation abilities is crucial as they are key predictors of future socio-emotional development. Infrared thermal imaging (ITI) is a promising non-invasive technique for studying physiological regulation of socio-emotional states in children in both ecological and controlled settings. Despite its potential, no review has summarized the current evidence in the field.

Joint attention and exogenous attention allocation during mother-infant interaction at 12 months associate with 24-month vocabulary composition.

Introduction: Early attentional processes are inherently linked with early parent-infant interactions and play a critical role in shaping cognitive and linguistic development. This study explored how specific early attention mechanisms-namely, exogenous attention allocation and joint attention initiation-during mother-infant interactions at 12 months may influence language development at 24 months.

Methods: A sample of 46 typically developing children was observed at 12 months during mother-infant interactions obtained through remote videotaping.

Autonomy in children and adolescents with visual impairment: Validation of the Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy scale.

Aim: To validate the Visual Impairment Developmental Autonomy (VIDA) scale, a questionnaire to assess the autonomy level of children with visual impairment.

Method: The primary outcome measures included internal consistency, convergent validity, cross-informant concordance, and descriptive statistics of autonomy profiles across three age groups (age 3-5 years; age 6-10 years; age 11-18 years). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's Alpha coefficient.

2-Brain Regulation for Improved Neuroprotection during Early Development (2-BRAINED): a translational hyperscanning research project.

Introduction: Very preterm (VPT) birth is a major risk condition for child development and parental wellbeing, mainly due to multiple sources of stress (e.g., separation and pain exposure) during the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stay.

Exploring the impact of manual and automatic EEG pre-processing methods on interpersonal neural synchrony measures in parent-infant hyperscanning studies.

Background: Electroencephalograph (EEG) hyperscanning allows studying Interpersonal Neural Synchrony (INS) between two or more individuals across different social conditions, including parent-infant interactions. Signal pre-processing is crucial to optimize computation of INS estimates; however, few attempts have been made at comparing the impact of different dyadic EEG data pre-processing methods on INS estimates.

New Methods: EEG data collected on 31 mother-infant dyads (8-10 months) engaged in a Face-to-Face Still-Face Procedure were pre-processed with two versions of the same pipeline, the "automated" and the "manual".

Job Demands and Resources Shape the Risk of Burnout in Italian Child Neuropsychiatrists.

To evaluate the influence of job demands and resources on burnout risk among Italian pediatric neuropsychiatrists. This cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2023 and February 2024 and involved Italian pediatric neuropsychiatrists. The study applied the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model to assess the impact of job demands (such as work-family conflict, time pressure, and job uncertainty) and job resources (like organizational support and perceived job meaning) on burnout.

Climate Change Challenge Faced by Italian Children: A Nationwide Study.

Climate change threatens environmental stability and human health, with limited research on younger children's perceptions. This study examines Italian primary school children's views on climate change to guide educational and policy strategies. Surveying 973 children (5-11 years) from different regions, findings showed high awareness (93%) and concern (63%) about climate change.

Exploring the impact of parents' face-mask wearing on dyadic interactions in infants at higher likelihood for autism compared with general population.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and researchers have raised questions regarding the potential impact of protective face-mask wearing on infants' development. Nevertheless, limited research has tested infants' response to protective face-mask wearing adults in real-life interactions and in neurodiverse populations. In addition, scarce attention was given to changes in interactive behavior of adults wearing a protective face-mask.

Expanded perspectives: integrating clinicians' insights for comprehensive patient-reported outcomes in value-based healthcare.

The manuscript explores value-based healthcare (VBHC) and its role in assessing healthcare quality beyond clinical metrics. It identifies four value types: personal, technical, allocative, and societal. Emphasizing the integration of diverse stakeholder perspectives, including patients, families, and clinicians, the study highlights the importance of patient- and family-reported measures (PROMs and PREMs) and clinician input.

Gaze Orienting in the Social World: An Exploration of the Role Played by Caregiving Vocal and Tactile Behaviors in Infants with Visual Impairment and in Sighted Controls.

Infant attention is a cognitive function that underlines sensory-motor integration processes at the interface between the baby and the surrounding physical and socio-relational environment, mainly with the caregivers. The investigation of the role of non-visual inputs (i.e.

Pandemic babies: A systematic review of the association between maternal pandemic-related stress during pregnancy and infant development.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its far-reaching influence on daily life, constituted a highly stressful experience for many people worldwide, jeopardizing individuals' mental health, particularly in vulnerable populations such as pregnant women. While a growing body of evidence links prenatal maternal stress to biological and developmental alterations in offspring, the specific impact of prenatal exposure to maternal pandemic-related stress (PRS) on infant development remains unclear. A comprehensive literature search was performed in October 2023 according to the PRISMA guidelines, which yielded a total of 28 records.

Masked or not, I smile to you: Exploring full-term and preterm infants' social smiles to adults wearing a protective facemask.

The early emergence of social smiles is an important milestone of infants' socio-emotional development. Our aim was to assess how the use of protective facemasks by adults affects the display of social smiles in preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) infants at 3 months (corrected age for prematurity). We enrolled 30 FT and 30 PT infants (gestational age ≤ 32 weeks).

Exposure to pollution during the first thousand days and telomere length regulation: A literature review.

Telomere length (TL) is a biomarker for cellular senescence and TL erosion is predictive of the risk for age-related diseases. Despite being genetically determined at birth, TL may be susceptible to modifications through epigenetic mechanisms. Pollutant agents are considered one of the major threats to both human and planetary health.

Short report: Siblings of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, a phenomenological perspective on parental perception.

Background: Siblings, typically developing brothers and sisters of children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), are at risk for long-term psychosocial difficulties.

Objective: The present study aims at obtaining an in-depth insight on the lived experience of siblings of children with NDD through their parents' perspective.

Methods: Seven mothers and three fathers who signed up their sibling children (12-15 years) to a peer-support intervention participated in a semi-structured videoconference interview according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) qualitative approach.

Prenatal exposure to environmental air pollution and psychosocial stress jointly contribute to the epigenetic regulation of the serotonin transporter gene in newborns.

Antenatal exposures to maternal stress and to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM) have been independently associated with developmental outcomes in early infancy and beyond. Knowledge about their joint impact, biological mechanisms of their effects and timing-effects, is still limited.

Only an inkblot? A literature review of the neural correlates of the Rorschach inkblot test.

The Rorschach inkblot test allows access to psychological processes that usually do not emerge in self-report measures and it has been widely used in clinical psychological and psychiatric settings. Recordings of brain activity during the administration of the Rorschach inkblots test could provide information on neural correlates of the underlying perceptual-cognitive processing and potentially identify neuroimaging markers of psychopathology risk. The present paper offers a systematization of the available literature on the Rorschach inkblot test and neuroimaging research.

Health consciousness and pro-environmental behaviors in an Italian representative sample: A cross-sectional study.

Individual health-related behavior is among the most influential yet modifiable factors affecting both climate change and chronic disease. To encourage behaviors bringing about environmental and health co-benefits, it is important to understand the underlying factors of behavior change for healthy and sustainable lifestyles. One area of potential overlap concerns people's health consciousness.

Maternal pandemic-related stress during pregnancy associates with infants' socio-cognitive development at 12 months: A longitudinal multi-centric study.

Background: Prenatal maternal stress is a key risk factor for infants' development. Previous research has highlighted consequences for infants' socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes, but less is known for what regards socio-cognitive development. In this study, we report on the effects of maternal prenatal stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic on 12-month-old infants' behavioral markers of socio-cognitive development.