Maternal Cognitive Function and Neurobehavioral Development of Underprivileged Children

Abstract

Trajectories of neurobehavioral development of children in disadvantageous situations in terms of psychological, physiological, and environmental are retarded during the first 5 years of their life. It is also known that the factors like psychological, physiological, and environmental are greatly influenced by cognitive functioning of the caregiver during that time. With the background in mind, we aimed to examine whether there is any association of maternal cognitive function with the neurobehavioral development of children living in two urban slums in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. We enrolled 207 mother-child (12 to 42 months) dyads. Rigorously trained testers assessed children’s cognitive, language, and motor development using adapted version of Bayley-III and behavior using Wolke’s behavior ratings. They also assessed cognitive function of mothers using modified version of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and forward and backward Digit Span scale. Other measures included assessment of home stimulation/home environment, parenting practices, self-esteem of mothers and anthropometry of children using WHO standards. All data were checked and transformed or categorized as required. Pearson bivariate correlation showed that maternal cognitive function is positively associated with cognitive, language, and motor performance of children (r = .22 to .26, p < .01) with or without controlling for age of the children. Additionally, parenting practice was positively associated with each of the three domain of neurodevelopment equally (r = .21, p < .01), and MMSE was positively associated with both height and weight z scores (r = .21, p < .01). Finally, multiple linear regression analysis divulged that MMSE is a significant predictor of both cognitive and language development after controlling for possible covariates, but not for the motor development. Standardized coefficient value indicated that one unit increase in MMSE results in around .35 unit improvements in both the cognitive and language development.Moreover, better home stimulation predicted improved cognitive ability (β = .21, p < .05) and higher self-esteem of mothers predicted improved motor ability of children (β = .41, p < .01). The findings of the study can be taken to suggest that maternal cognitive function has really a significant influence on the improvements in neurobehavioral development of underprivileged children in Bangladesh. Therefore, intervention programs need to be emphasized on maternal cognition to improve neurobehavioral development of children who are especially be raised in psychosocial adversity.