Effects of maternal depression on maternal responsiveness and infants' expressive language abilities

Ruth Brookman, Marina Kalashnikova, Penny Levickis, Janet Conti, Nan Xu Rattanasone, Kerry-Ann Grant, Katherine Demuth, Denis Burnham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

High levels of maternal responsiveness are associated with healthy cognitive and emotional development in infants. However, depression and anxiety can negatively impact individual mothers' responsiveness levels and infants' expressive language abilities. Australian mother-infant dyads (N = 48) participated in a longitudinal study examining the effect of maternal responsiveness (when infants were 9- and 12-months), and maternal depression and anxiety symptoms on infant vocabulary size at 18-months. Global maternal responsiveness ratings were stronger predictors of infants' vocabulary size than levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. However, depression levels moderated the effect of maternal responsiveness on vocabulary size. These results highlight the importance of screening for maternal responsiveness-in addition to depression-to identify infants who may be at developmental risk. Also, mothers with elevated depression need support to first reduce their symptoms so that improvements in their responsiveness have the potential to be protective for their infant's language acquisition.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0277762
Number of pages20
JournalPLoS One
Volume18
Issue number1 January
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2023 Brookman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2023 Brookman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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