Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35942886›Full record

Trial reportJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2023

Effects of daily full-term infant skin-to-skin contact on behavior and cognition at age three - secondary outcomes of a randomized controlled trial.

Nicole Rheinheimer, Roseriet Beijers, Nina Bruinhof, Kelly H M Cooijmans, Carolina de Weerth

Open access · hybridAbstract readRandomized Controlled Trial
In one paragraph

Trial report in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
1.8field-weighted citation impact, top 16% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Trial
  2. Trial
  3. Gut-X axis.iMeta · 2025
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Nicole RheinheimerDepartment of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-9327-8305
Roseriet BeijersDepartment of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-4033-6620
Nina BruinhofDepartment of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Kelly H M CooijmansDepartment of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Carolina de WeerthDepartment of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0002-0921-1811
Radboud University Nijmegen · NL

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundDaily skin-to-skin contact (SSC) during early infancy fosters the long-term development of children born preterm. This is the first randomized controlled trial assessing the potential beneficial effects of daily SSC on executive functioning and socio-emotional behavior of children born full-term. Whether children of mothers who experienced prenatal stress and anxiety benefitted more from SSC was also explored.

methodsPregnant women (N = 116) were randomly assigned to a SSC or care-as-usual (CAU) condition. Women in the SSC condition were instructed to perform one hour of SSC daily from birth until postnatal week five. Prenatal stress was measured with questionnaires on general and pregnancy-specific stress and anxiety completed by the mothers in gestational week 37. At child age three, mothers filled in questionnaires on children's executive functioning, and externalizing and internalizing behavior. Analyses were performed in an intention-to-treat (ITT), per-protocol, and dose-response approach. Netherlands Trial Register: NL5591.

resultsIn the ITT approach, fewer internalizing (95% CI = 0.11-1.00, U = 2148.50, r = .24, p = .001) and externalizing (95% CI = 0.04-2.62, t = 2.04, d = 0.38, p = .04) problems were reported in the SSC condition compared to the CAU condition. Multivariate analyses of variance did not show group differences on executive functioning. Additional analyses of covariance showed no moderations by maternal prenatal stress.

conclusionsCurrent findings indicate that early daily SSC in full-term infants may foster children's behavioral development. Future replications, including behavioral observations of child behavior to complement maternal reports, are warranted.

Indexed as

Mother-Child RelationsMothersChildChild BehaviorCognitionFemaleHumansInfantInfant, NewbornNetherlandsPregnancybehavioral developmentexecutive functioningSkin-to-skin contactterm-birth

Identifiers

PMID35942886
PMCPMC10087794
OpenAlexW4290756024

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.