**5. Evaluation**

Along the diachronic developmental perspective of the approaches depicted above, aside from "NIDCAP®," the "Faustlos" program for children has probably been evaluated the most, leading to augmentations in elementary and secondary education [141, 150, 151]. As to the kindergarten curriculum, identifying emotions turned out to be easier for children who took part in the program than for those who did not; the same for pro-social dealings with conflicts. The change of perspective through stories seen from different personal viewpoints is strongly supported in the program; something which has regularly been reported as revelatory [152, 153] as it calls attention to divergent experiencing. Generally, a specific anxiety-reducing effect supporting the transfer of competencies to everyday life has been shown in the program [154], which is highly important since effects on the level of intrapsychic emotion entail even more appropriate interpersonal pro-social behavior [91, 153]. Moreover, it has widely been well-accepted and therefore has been implemented at many kindergartens in Germany.

Practically, maternal symptom burden relief remains a highly important goal of intervention in the other approaches above. As has been shown, symptom relief has direct impact on the infant's development [120]. Personal reactivation and repetition of one's own experiences, such as preverbal, maybe even intrauterine [123] strain and other conflict formations leave their imprint on mothers-to-be: what can be said is that programs starting prenatally will approach mothers-to-be relatively early. This holds true for "SAFE" and "Das Baby verstehen," which are well-structured and designed for parents, and tend to address important everyday dealings with the infant such as the reading of signals in a closed or half-open group setting, with different emphases, respectively [128, 137]. Somewhat different from these, "Mutter-Kind-Bindungsanalyse" has been conceptualized as an individually shaped setting in which the emotionality of mothers-to-be and their empathic dealing with the unborn are approached in mid-pregnancy. Regarding this concept, the main case study results are promising [123, 155]. Especially combining of any of the structured programs with mother-infant bonding analysis would be worth

*Challenges for Behavioral Neuroscience: Prenatal, Postnatal, and Social Factors DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85368*

studied. As there is much diversity in parents' perceptions of cause of children's symptoms [51], especially an early introspective psychosomatic intervention like mother-infant bonding analysis is promising. It has been recommended in particular by neonatology experts that have intensely applied "skin-to-skin/kangaroo care" or "NIDCAP®" [8]. The most important benefit from "skin-to-skin/kangaroo care," as studies have shown, is a change in the mother's perception of her child, attributable to the skin-to-skin contact ("bonding effect"), which supports and promotes attachment between infant and mother. Mothers in "skin-to-skin/kangaroo care" feel more competent ("resilience effect") in stressful situations in the NICU [14, 156–158], and mother-infant relations develop better; a tendency to less interaction disorders and less crying at the age of 6 months has been observed.

"NIDCAP®" has shown to have numerous positive effects on both the somatic and the neurological short-term development as well as on long-term developmental outcome of preterm infants such as motor and mental development, development of intelligence, behavioral development, and mother-infant interaction [159–162]. It also showed the first in vivo evidence of positive effects of early postnatal experience on brain development, i.e., of enhanced brain function and structure [11, 14]. This study demonstrated that the quality of the unborn's experiencing influences brain development significantly. Recently, further studies in the field have been conducted, such as on the effects of music and the mother's voice [14, 131, 163].
