MATERNAL DEPRESSION AND INFANT LEARNING

描述（改编自申请人摘要）：在正常发育期婴儿中 二对，照顾者调节婴儿的注意力和唤醒状态， 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。 有下列症状的母亲 抑郁症不能为他们提供必要的情绪和状态调节， 婴儿，谁表现出混乱的状态和行为，在二分体，谁是 在以后的情感、依恋和认知问题上有风险。 一 大量的研究表明，照顾者使用声音通道， 特别是调节婴儿的注意力、情感、唤醒， 信息处理 婴儿导向言语（ID）具有夸大的 基频（Fo）相对于成人定向（AD）的调制 言语，并且已知会引起更强烈的行为和情感反应 从婴儿开始。 症状母亲身份识别言语的研究 抑郁症的研究表明， 调变 在一项涉及联想学习范式的初步研究中， 非抑郁母亲的4个月大的婴儿被教导了一种与抑郁症之间的联系。 声音和笑脸，ID语音片段，从母亲与相对 很少有抑郁症的症状与面部有关，而 这些片段是由具有相对较多的 抑郁症无法与面部联系起来。 的ID演讲 抑郁症状多的母亲缺乏引起注意的上升， Fo轮廓是正常ID语音的特征。 拟议 实验将试图复制这一发现， 更严重的抑郁症症状，并探讨更详细的 这些母亲的ID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可以联想到他们的ID语音， 母亲，其他抑郁的母亲，或非抑郁的控制 面部刺激。 联想的同时效度和预测效度 学习贝利婴儿发展量表的表现将 也要评估。 这项研究的重要性在于， 有希望阐明一种机制，母亲抑郁症影响 婴儿联想学习，从而提出降低风险的策略 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.