To separate effects of maternal depression on infant cognitive versus language development, 1-year-olds were assessed using the revised Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID-III). Percentile scores on the Bayley Expressive Communication (EC) subscale were significantly negatively correlated with maternal self-report scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). However, mothers’ BDI-II scores did not correlate with infant percentile scores on the general cognitive (COG) or receptive communication (RC) subscales. Boys had significantly lower percentile scores than girls on the RC and EC scales, but did not differ on the Cog scale. Gender and maternal depression did not significantly interact on any of the scales. These findings suggest problems with expressive communication precede, and may at least partially account for, apparent deficits in general cognitive development.

The hypothesis that the associative learning-promoting effects of infant-directed speech (IDS) depend on infants’ social experience was tested in a conditioned-attention paradigm with a cumulative sample of 4- to 14-month-old infants. Following six forward pairings of a brief IDS segment and a photographic slide of a smiling female face, infants of clinically depressed mothers exhibited evidence of having acquired significantly weaker voice–face associations than infants of non-depressed mothers. Regression analyses revealed that maternal depression was significantly related to infant learning even after demographic correlates of depression, antidepressant medication use, and extent of pitch modulation in maternal IDS had been taken into account. However, after maternal depression had been accounted for, maternal emotional availability, coded by blind raters from separate play interactions, accounted for significant further increments in the proportion of variance accounted for in infant learning scores. Both maternal depression and maternal insensitivity negatively, and additively, predicted poor learning.

Polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor gene, OXTR_rs53576, have been linked to differences in maternal sensitivity and depressive symptoms. Although some studies suggest the A allele confers risk for mood disorders, individuals homozygous for the G allele may exhibit greater sensitivity to both positive and negative social experiences, including in the mother-infant dyad. Given the bi-directional nature of mother-infant influences on maternal mood, we tested the association between both mothers' and infants' OXTR_rs53576 genotype and maternal depression, as assessed through a self-report inventory. Although Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) scores were significantly higher for GG in comparison to AG/AA mothers, and for mothers of GG in comparison to AG/AA infants, an ANCOVA revealed that after sociodemographic risk factors had been controlled, infants', but not mothers', OXTR genotype predicted maternal depression scores, with no significant interaction between the two. The effect of infant OXTR on maternal depression was not explained by maternal reports of difficult infant temperament. We propose that GG infants have an enhanced capacity for processing both positive and negative socially meaningful contextual information, first amplifying and then differentially perpetuating negative affectivity in mothers who exhibit depressive characteristics. K E Y W O R D Sinfant temperament, mood disorders, oxytocin receptor gene, postpartum depression | 497 ASHERIN Et Al.

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