Depressed Mothers Take Longer to Respond to Their Child

Women who are depressed take longer to respond to their children during back-and-forth communication, suggested a recent study at the University of Missouri. The findings lay the groundwork for future research to establish whether the children's language development, vocabulary or academic outcomes are affected by the shorter response time.

Depression in Mothers Linked with Their Communication with Their Babies

Nicholas Smith, an assistant professor in the MU School of Health Professions, and his colleagues listened to audio recordings of over 100 families involved in the Early Head Start program, which is a federal child development program for children whose families' income is at or below the federal poverty line. Some of the mothers were depressed, and Smith's team recorded how much time passed between responses for a mother and her child during back-and-forth communication. “We found that the time gap in between responses, in general, gets shorter between mother and child as the child ages, and we also found the mom’s timing tended to predict the child’s timing and vice versa,” Smith said. “Mothers and children are in sync. Children who were slower to respond to their mom often had moms who were slower to respond to the child, and children who were faster to respond to their mom had moms who were faster to respond to the child. The significant new finding was that the moms who were more depressed took longer to respond to their child compared to moms who were less depressed.”

Conversations Between Mother-Child Affect Children's Development

They compared the reaction time of back-and-forth discussion between mothers and their children when the children were 14 months old and 36 months old in the longitudinal study utilizing audio recordings. Smith intends to investigate the conversation response time for the same children who were recorded in this study when they were in pre-kindergarten and also when they were in fifth grade to see how these effects play out later in the children's development.

“The overall objective we are hoping to accomplish is to better understand how mother-child interaction works as well as the underlying mechanisms and potential factors at play,” Smith said. “Once we identify what factors drive successful development outcomes and what factors potentially impair development, we can better identify at-risk children and then tailor potential interventions toward those that can benefit from them the most.”

Source-Medindia