A new model to study season-of-conception effects on child neurodevelopment based on maternal history of seasonal affective disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Season of birth/conception has been used to study neurodevelopmental risk in hundreds of studies, but the translational impact of this work remains limited. • We propose a new model to study season-of-conception effects using maternal history of fall-winter Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as a key moderating variable. • In support of this model, we found that a fall-winter conception was associated with impaired child executive functioning at age 54 months, but only in girls of mothers in the SAD group. • After nearly a century of related research, this is the first study to demonstrate that maternal seasonality may be an important consideration when doing early neurodevelopmental research based on pregnancy timing. • This approach could inform novel preventative strategies to limit neuro-developmental adversity at an individual pregnancy level. Season of birth/conception has been used to study neurodevelopmental risk in hundreds of studies, however the translational impact of this work remains limited. We propose a new model to study season-of- conception effects on neurodevelopment using maternal fall-winter seasonality as a key moderating variable, and provide initial empirical data to support this new approach. In an ongoing pregnancy cohort study we evaluated associations between season-of conception and maternal history of fall-winter Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) on child executive functioning in 520 children at age 54 months. Executive functioning was measured using computerized administration of the Flanker test (a measure of attention) and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (a measure of cognitive flexibility). Results indicated that sixty-four mothers (12.3%) met criteria for historical fall-winter SAD. MANCOVA found a significant season of conception (fall-winter vs. spring-summer) by maternal SAD (yes/no) by sex (female/male) interaction predicting the two child outcomes (F = 4.11, df= 2,509, p=.017). In the subgroup of children in the SAD group, girls conceived in the fall-winter vs. spring-summer months had significantly lower scores on the Dimensional Change Card Sort. No significant effects related to season of conception and/or maternal SAD were found in boys. Similar results were found after controlling for maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy. In summary, season-of-conception was associated with impaired child executive functioning at age 54 months, but only in girls of mothers with a history of fall-winter SAD. The use of maternal seasonality and sex as moderating variables may be critical to early neuro- developmental research based on pregnancy timing, particularly at more northern latitudes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.011 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".