Learning in Infants of Chronically Depressed Mothers

描述（由申请人提供）：婴儿导向（ID）语音是年幼婴儿的重要刺激来源，但抑郁的母亲产生的ID语音在感知和情感上都是平淡的（1，2）。抑郁母亲的四个月大婴儿在条件性注意范式中表现出联想学习缺陷，其中他们自己母亲的ID言语的一小部分发出笑脸出现的信号（3）。与4个月大的婴儿不同，6到13个月大的婴儿的母亲患有慢性抑郁症，他们进一步无法学习由不熟悉的非抑郁母亲产生的“高质量”ID语音（4）。然而，这些年龄较大的婴儿表现出比正常更好的学习，以响应男性ID语音（4）。这项研究有三个具体目标。具体目标1是调查的发展，广义的学习缺陷，以回应母亲的ID语音，给予个别婴儿的抑郁症和非抑郁症的母亲的联想学习测试与“高品质”的母亲和父亲的ID语音在4个月和12个月的年龄。具体目标2是研究婴儿学习之间的关系，以响应婴儿自己的抑郁症和/或非抑郁症的母亲和父亲的ID语音，以及父母与婴儿的互动和依恋关系的质量是否调解ID语音对婴儿学习的影响。具体目标3是评估12个月大的婴儿，他们的母亲和父亲都是慢性抑郁症的反应，以“高质量”的ID语音所产生的不熟悉的非抑郁症的母亲和父亲，以确定这些婴儿表现出最广泛的学习缺陷。这些研究很重要，因为它们允许对长期抑郁母亲的婴儿的学习缺陷的发展进行严格的分析，并指出了一种合理的机制，通过这种机制，最初能够学习的学习者发展为普遍的学习缺陷。这些实验有望为未来旨在预防抑郁母亲的婴儿学习问题的研究奠定基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Infant-directed (ID) speech is an important source of stimulation for young infants, but depressed mothers produce ID speech that is perceptually and affectively flat (1,2). Four-month-old infants of depressed mothers exhibit associative learning deficits in a conditioned-attention paradigm, in which a brief segment of their own mother's ID speech signals the appearance of a smiling face (3). Six- to 13-month-old infants of chronically depressed mothers, unlike 4-month-olds, further fail to learn in response to "high-quality" ID speech produced by an unfamiliar non-depressed mother (4). However, these older infants exhibit better- than-normal learning in response to male ID speech (4). The proposed research has three Specific Aims. Specific Aim 1 is to investigate the development of the generalized learning deficit in response to maternal ID speech by giving individual infants of depressed and non-depressed mothers' associative learning tests with "high-quality" maternal and paternal ID speech at both 4 and 12 months of age. Specific Aim 2 is to examine the relationship between infant learning in response to the infant's own depressed and/or non-depressed mother's and father's ID speech, and whether the quality of parent-infant interaction and attachment relationships mediate the effects of ID speech on infant learning. Specific Aim 3 is to assess 12-month-old infants whose mothers and fathers are both chronically depressed for their responses to "high-quality" ID speech produced by unfamiliar non-depressed mothers and fathers, to determine if these infants exhibit the broadest learning deficits. These studies are important because they permit a rigorous analysis of the development of learning deficits in infants of chronically depressed mothers, and point to a plausible mechanism through which initially able learners develop generalized learning deficits. These experiments promise to lay the foundation for future studies aimed at preventing learning problems in infants of depressed mothers.