MATERNAL DEPRESSION AND INFANT LEARNING

描述(改编自申请者摘要)：正常照顾者-婴儿 双亲，照顾者调节婴儿的注意力以及唤醒和情感的状态 通过密切监测婴儿，并提供适当的声音，面部， 手势、动觉和触觉刺激。母亲有以下症状 抑郁症不能为他们的情绪和状态提供必要的调节 在二分体中表现出紊乱状态和行为的婴儿，以及 处于以后情绪、依恋和认知问题的风险中。一个 大量研究表明，照顾者在治疗中使用声道 特别是调节婴儿的注意力、情感、唤醒和 信息处理。婴儿导向(ID)言语有夸张之处 基频(Fo)相对于成人定向(AD)的调制 言语，众所周知，它能引起更强的行为和情感反应 从婴儿身上。有症状母亲的身份识别言语研究 抑郁症的研究表明，它往往不那么夸张 调制。 在一项涉及联想学习范式的初步研究中 非抑郁母亲的4个月大的孩子被教导一种联系 声音和笑脸，ID语音片段来自母亲的相对 很少有抑郁症的症状容易与脸部联系在一起，而 那些由母亲产生的片段具有相对较多的症状 抑郁症不能与脸部联系在一起。他的ID演讲 有更多抑郁症状的母亲缺乏引起关注的上升 具有正常身份识别语音特征的FO轮廓。建议数 实验将试图复制这一发现，将研究扩展到母亲 更严重的抑郁症症状，并更详细地探索 这些母亲产生的身份识别语音的声学相关性。 此外，抑郁母亲的婴儿的联想学习将是 研究以确定这些母亲是否能将她们的ID语音联系起来 母亲，其他抑郁母亲，或非抑郁对照组的母亲 面部刺激物。联想测验的并发效度和预测效度 学习在贝利婴儿发展量表上的表现将 也要接受评估。这项拟议研究的重要性在于其 承诺阐明母亲抑郁影响的一种机制 婴儿联想学习，从而提出降低风险的策略 来治疗认知缺陷。

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): In normal caregiver-infant dyads, caregivers regulate infant attention and state of arousal and affect by closely monitoring the infant and providing appropriate vocal, facial, gestural, kinesthetic and tactile stimulation. Mothers with symptoms of depression fail to provide needed emotional and state regulation for their infants, who exhibit disordered state and behavior in the dyad and who are at risk for later problems of emotion, attachment, and cognition. A substantial body of research shows that caregivers use the vocal channel in particular to modulate infant attention, affect, arousal, and information-processing. Infant-directed (ID) speech possesses exaggerated modulation of the fundamental frequency (Fo) relative to adult-directed (AD) speech, and is known to elicit stronger behavioral and affective responding from infants. Research on the ID speech produced by mothers with symptoms of depression has shown that it tends to have less exaggerated Fo modulation. In a preliminary study involving an associative learning paradigm in which 4-month-olds of nondepressed mothers were taught an association between a voice and a smiling face, ID speech segments from mothers with relatively few symptoms of depression were readily associated with the face, whereas those segments produced by mothers with comparatively more symptoms of depression failed to enter into association with the face. The ID speech of mothers with more symptoms of depression lacked the attention-getting rising Fo contours that are characteristic of normal ID speech. The proposed experiments will seek to replicate this finding, extend the study to mothers with more severe symptoms of depression, and explore in greater detail the acoustic correlates of ID speech produced by these mothers. In addition, associative learning in infants of depressed mothers will be studied to determine if these mothers can associate the ID speech of their mothers, that of other depressed mothers, or that of nondepressed controls with face stimuli. The concurrent and predictive validity of associative learning for performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development will also be assessed. The importance of the proposed research lies in its promise to elucidate one mechanism by which maternal depression influences infant associative learning, thereby suggesting strategies to reduce risk for cognitive deficits.