گفتار هدایت شده نوزاد، افسردگی مادر و یادگیری مرتبط با نوزاد

Maternal depression is thought to disrupt the normal process by which caregivers evaluate and then regulate infants’ states of arousal and affect through repetitive and rhythmic vocal, facial, gestural, kinesthetic, and tactile stimulation. The resulting emotional and state dysregulation is postulated to contribute to the elevated risk of these infants for later problems in affect regulation, attachment, and cognition. The current experiments focused on one such channel of stimulation, the speech channel. Jnfant directed (ID) speech has been shown to play an important role in the modulation of infant attention, affect, and state of arousal. Compared with adult-directed (AD) speech, ID speech is more effective at engaging and maintaining attention, modulating arousal, communicating affect, and facilitating leaming and information-processing. Prior work in our laboratory has shown that ID speech segments am more effective than are AD speech segments as signals or conditioned stimuli for face reinforcers in a conditioned attention paradigm. Here, we report the findings from 2 experiments ex amining the signaling effectiveness of ID speech produced by adult and teen mothers varying in self-reported symptoms of depression.