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Affective experience in ecologically relevant contexts is dynamic and not progressively attenuated during pregnancy

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Abstract

Pregnancy is thought to diminish a woman's appraisal of and affective response to stressors. To examine this assumption, we used an electronic diary and an ecological momentary assessment strategy to record women's (n = 85) experiences of positive and negative affect five times each day over 2 days within each trimester of pregnancy. The women also completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale in each trimester. Multilevel modeling indicated nonlinear patterns for both positive and negative affect that differed by the level of depressive symptoms. The findings suggest that changes in the psychological experience over the course of pregnancy are dynamic and not progressively attenuated.

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Notes

  1. The data could be structured in four levels (moments within days, within trimesters, and within persons); however, for simplicity, we used a two-level structure.

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Correspondence to Gerald F. Giesbrecht.

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This research was supported in part by funding from the Alberta Innovates-Health Solutions and Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute. The authors thank Codie Rouleau, Amy Hampson, Diego Padilla-Ontanon, and the participants of The Pregnancy Mood and Cortisol study for their contributions to this research.

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Giesbrecht, G.F., Letourneau, N., Campbell, T. et al. Affective experience in ecologically relevant contexts is dynamic and not progressively attenuated during pregnancy. Arch Womens Ment Health 15, 481–485 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-012-0300-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00737-012-0300-4

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