An associative learning deficit in 1-year-old infants of depressed mothers: Role of depression duration

Abstract

The effectiveness of infant-directed speech (IDS) produced by non-depressed mothers for promoting the acquisition of voice-face associations was investigated in 1-year-old children of depressed mothers in a conditioned-attention paradigm. Prior research suggested that infants of mothers with comparatively longer-duration depressive episodes exhibit poorer learning in response to non-depressed mothers’ IDS, but duration of depression was confounded with infant age. In the current study, 1-year-old infants of currently depressed mothers with relatively longer-duration depressive episodes (i.e., perinatal onset) showed significantly poorer learning than 1-year-olds of currently depressed mothers with relatively shorter duration depressive episodes (non-perinatal onset). This was true despite the fact that there were no measurable differences in the severity of depression, level of social functioning, or antidepressant medication use between the two groups. These findings add support to the hypothesis that there is an experience-based change in responsiveness to female IDS in infants of depressed mothers during the first year of life.

Maternal depression and the learning-promoting effects of infant-directed speech: Roles of maternal sensitivity, depression diagnosis, and speech acoustic cues

“…There is evidence that mean Δ F 0 in maternal IDS “pet the gorilla” utterances itself correlates significantly with MCDI productive vocabulary scores (Kaplan et al, 1997), suggesting that the speech acoustic cues which were not predictive of associative learning here may nonetheless play some role in rudimentary language acquisition. In addition, difference scores from conditioned-attention tests with 12-month-olds in which an unfamiliar non-depressed mother’s IDS signaled a smiling face correlated significantly with concurrent MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI; Fenson et al, 2000) receptive vocabulary scores (Kaplan et al, 2011); a floor effect may have prevented detection of an effect on MCDI productive vocabulary scores). To date, though, no evidence has linked deficits in conditioned-attention performance to general cognitive development.…”

“…The fact that infants of insensitive mothers become unresponsive even to “normal-sounding” IDS recorded from unfamiliar non-depressed mothers (Kaplan et al, 2011; Kaplan et al, 2012), and “hyper-responsive” to IDS recorded from unfamiliar, non-depressed fathers (Kaplan et al, 2010), suggests that the acquired significance and non-significance of IDS for infants in their day-to-day interactions transfers to subsequently encountered IDS, and may in some situations override its acoustic salience in determining infant responding.…”

“…In another study, individual infants of depressed mothers were found to exhibit significant learning in response to an unfamiliar non-depressed mother’s IDS at 4 months, but not at 12 months (Kaplan, Danko, Kalinka, & Cejka, 2012). Finally, 12-month-old infants of currently depressed mothers with perinatal depression onset did not exhibit significant voice–face associative learning in response to an unfamiliar non-depressed mother’s IDS, whereas 12-month-old infants of currently depressed mothers with later depression onset (mean duration of 4 months) did (Kaplan, Danko, Diaz, & Kalinka, 2011). Thus, consistent with a role for an infant’s experience with a depressed primary caregiver, infants of chronically depressed mothers not only failed to learn in response to their own mothers’ IDS in this paradigm, but also eventually exhibited poor learning in response to normal IDS.…”

A developmental decline in the learning-promoting effects of infant-directed speech for infants of mothers with chronically elevated symptoms of depression

“…A series of experiments using a conditioned-attention paradigm (see below) has shown that, although IDS normally serves as a “priming” stimulus to facilitate infant voice-face associative learning (Kaplan, Jung, Ryther, & Kirk, 1996), IDS produced by depressed mothers is relatively ineffective in this regard (Kaplan, Bachorowski, & Zarlengo-Strouse, 1999). Moreover, whereas 4-month-old infants of depressed mothers learn well in response to IDS produced by unfamiliar non-depressed mothers, older infants of more chronically depressed mothers do not (Kaplan, Dungan, & Zinser, 2004; Kaplan, Danko, Diaz, & Kalinka, 2011), suggesting an experience-based change in infant responsiveness to maternal IDS. Because caregivers frequently use IDS and other stimuli to prime infant learning about the world around them (Fernald, 1984), an analysis of a progressive decline in responding to IDS across the first year in infants of depressed mothers may provide clues about the development of cognitive delays in these infants.…”

The effects of exposure to dynamic expressions of affect on 5-month-olds’ memory

“…More broadly, research also reveals that emotional abuse and neglect have profound effects on children's recognition of affect, their development of memory, and their broader cognitive development (e.g., Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung, & Reed, 2000;Pollak, Messner, Kistler, & Cohn, 2009;Shackman & Pollak, 2005). Finally, research also demonstrates that infants raised by a mother with depression show impaired memory, impaired associative learning, and delayed cognitive development (e.g., Kaplan, Burgess, Sliter, & Moreno, 2009;Kaplan, Danko, Diaz, & Kalinka, 2011). Thus while much is known regarding adults and children's memories for emotional events (see Blaney, 1986 for a review) including the broader effects of physical and emotional abuse on early memory and cognitive development, little is known about the effects of emotion at the time of encoding on children's or infants' visual recognition memory.…”