Maternal depression and expressive communication in one-year-old infants

Abstract

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.

Cognitive and language performance in children is associated with maternal social anxiety disorder: A study of young mothers in southern Brazil

“…Gender differences in relation to the language highlighted in this study have also been found in other studies, which suggest that girls have better communication performance when compared to boys [10][11][12][13][14]. A meta-analytic review shows that the age of children is associated to this gender difference.…”

“…Some studies show that poor maternal mental health has a negative effect on early childhood development. However, most of them evaluate the role of maternal depression (pregnancy and postpartum depression) and their effect on young children's (b 2 years old) cognitive function [11,13,22] and language abilities [12,16]. Studies evaluating the effect of maternal anxiety disorders on their children cognitive and language development is scare or inexistent, especially in those over 2 years.…”

“…It has been shown that this poor development is higher in male children [10][11][12][13][14], as well as in those born premature [8,15], who do not go to a daycare [14] and who spend less time with their mothers. In addition, maternal characteristics are also important predictors cognitive and language development.…”

Neonatal White Matter Maturation Is Associated With Infant Language Development

“…Finally, maternal depressive symptoms were included in the correlation analyses because maternal mood has been shown to alter the mother's perception of her infant's behavior and may thus affect her report of her child's language developmental status (McGrath et al, 2008). Also, maternal depression has been shown to negatively correlate with infant expressive communication (Kaplan et al, 2014) and cognition (Azak, 2012). Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies -Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977).…”

Depressive symptoms in parents are associated with reduced empathy toward their young children

“…Importantly, depression in parents is a significant risk factor for poorer outcomes for children [13,14]. For example, maternal depression is negatively associated with a child's language development [15,16]. Children of depressed mothers exhibit a stronger physiological response to stress (as measured by increased cortisol levels) [17][18][19][20].…”