Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T01:29:32.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effect of postnatal depression on mother–infant interaction, infant response to the Still-face perturbation, and performance on an Instrumental Learning task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2004

CHARLES STANLEY ,
LYNNE MURRAY  and
ALAN STEIN
CHARLES STANLEY
Affiliation:
Sunderland Royal Hospital
LYNNE MURRAY
Affiliation:
University of Reading
ALAN STEIN
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A representative community sample of primiparous depressed women and a nondepressed control group were assessed while in interaction with their infants at 2 months postpartum. At 3 months, infants were assessed on the Still-face perturbation of face to face interaction, and a subsample completed an Instrumental Learning paradigm. Compared to nondepressed women, depressed mothers' interactions were both less contingent and less affectively attuned to infant behavior. Postnatal depression did not adversely affect the infant's performance in either the Still-face perturbation or the Instrumental Learning assessment. Maternal responsiveness in interactions at 2 months predicted the infant's performance in the Instrumental Learning assessment but not in the Still-face perturbation. The implications of these findings for theories of infant cognitive and emotional development are discussed.This research was supported by the award of a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship to Charles Stanley. Lynne Murray was supported by a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. Alan Stein was supported by the Tedworth Trust and the Wellcome Trust. The authors would like to thank Anji West and Agnese Fiori\NCowley for their help with the coding of the assessments, Robbie Paterson for administrative assistance, Richard Hooper for assistance with the statistical analyses and Peter Cooper for collaboration in the planning of the study.

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ainsworth, M. D., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the Strange Situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Alessandri, S. M., Sullivan, M. W., Imaizumi, S., & Lewis, M. (1993). Learning and emotional responsivity in cocaine exposed infants. Developmental Psychology 29, 989–997.Google Scholar
Alessandri, S. M., Sullivan, M. W., & Lewis, M. (1990). Violation expectancy and frustration in early infancy. Developmental Psychology 26, 738–744.Google Scholar
Bigelow, A. E., MacLean, B. K., & MacDonald, D. (1996). Infants' response to live and replay interactions with self and mother. Merrill–Palmer Quarterly 42, 596–611.Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H., & Tamis–LeMonda, C. E. (1989). Maternal responsiveness and cognitive development in children. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Maternal responsiveness: Characteristics and consequences. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass.
Bornstein, M. H., & Tamis–LeMonda, C. E. (1997). Maternal responsiveness and infant mental abilities: Specific predictive relations. Infant Behavior and Development 20, 283–296.Google Scholar
Braungart–Rieker, J., Murphy–Garwood, M., Powers, B. P., & Notaro, P. C. (1998). Infant affect and affect regulation during the Still-face paradigm with mothers and fathers: The role of infant characteristics and parental sensitivity, Developmental Psychology 34, 1428–1437.Google Scholar
Brown, G. W., & Harris, T. (1978). Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women. New York: Free Press.
Buss, A. M., & Plomin, R. (1984). Temperament: Early developing personality traits. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Campbell, S. B., & Cohn, J. F. (1997). The timing and chronicity of postpartum depression: Implications for infant development. In L. Murray & P. J. Cooper (Eds.), Postpartum depression and child development. New York: Guilford Press.
Campbell, S. B., Cohn, J. F., & Meyers, T. (1995). Depression in first time mothers: Mother–infant interaction and depression chronicity. Developmental Psychology 31, 349–357.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D., & Cohen, D. J. (1995). Introduction. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology: Vol. 1. Theory and methods. New York: Wiley.
Coates, D. L., & Lewis, M. (1984). Early mother–infant interaction and infant cognitive status as predictors of school performance and cognitive behavior in six-year-olds. Child Development 55, 1219–1230.Google Scholar
Coghill, S. R., Caplan, H. L., Alexandra, H., Robson, K. M., & Kumar, R. (1986). Impact of postnatal depression on cognitive development in young children. British Medical Journal 292, 1165–1167.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., Campbell, S. B., & Ross, S. (1993). Infant response in the Still-face paradigm at 6 months predicts avoidant and secure attachment at 12 months. Development and Psychopathology 3, 367–376.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., Matias, R., Campbell, S. B., & Hopkins, J. (1990). Face to face interactions of postpartum depressed mother–infant pairs at 2 months. Developmental Psychology 26, 15–23.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., Matias, R., Tronick, E. Z., Connell, D., & Lyons–Ruth, K. (1986). Face to face interactions of depressed mothers and their infants. In E. Tronick & T. Field (Eds.), New directions for child development: No 34. Maternal depression and infant disturbance (pp. 31–41). San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass.
Cohn, J. F., & Tronick, E. Z. (1983). Three-month old infants' reaction to simulated maternal depression. Child Development 54, 185–193.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., & Tronick, E. Z. (1987). Mother–infant face-to-face interaction: The sequence of dyadic states at 3, 6, and 9 months. Developmental Psychology 23, 68–77.Google Scholar
Cohn, J. F., & Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Specificity of infants' response to mothers' affective behaviour. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 28, 242–248.Google Scholar
Cox, J. L., Holden, J. M., & Sagovsky, R. (1987). Detection of postnatal depression: Development of the 10-item Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. British Journal of Psychiatry 150, 782–786.Google Scholar
Field, T. F. (1984). Early interactions between infants and their postpartum depressed mothers. Infant Behavior and Development 7, 517–522.Google Scholar
Field, T. F., Healy, B., Goldstein, S., & Guthertz, M. (1990). Behavior-state matching and synchrony in mother–infant interactions of nondepressed versus depressed dyads. Developmental Psychology 26, 7–14.Google Scholar
Field, T. F., Healy, B., Goldstein, S., Perry, S., Bendell, D., Schanberg, S., Zimmerman, E., & Kuhn, C. (1988). Infants of depressed mothers show “depressed” behavior even with non-depressed adults. Child Development 59, 1569–1579.Google Scholar
Field, T. F., Vega–Lahr, N., Scafidi, F., & Goldstein, S. (1986). Effects of maternal unavailability on mother–infant interactions. Infant Behavior and Development 9, 473–478.Google Scholar
Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele, H., Higgitt, A., & Target, M. (1994). The Emmanual Millar Memorial Lecture, 1992: The theory and practice of resilience. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 35, 231–257.Google Scholar
Goodman, S. H., & Gotlib, I. H. (1999). Risk for psychopathology in the children of depressed mothers: A developmental model for understanding mechanisms of transmission. Psychological Review 106, 458–470.Google Scholar
Gunnar, M. R. (1980). Control, warning signals, and distress in infancy. Child Development 16, 281–289.Google Scholar
Gusella, J. L., Muir, D. W., & Tronick, E. Z. (1988). The effect of manipulating maternal behaviour during an interaction on 3 and 6 month olds' affect and attention. Child Development 59, 1111–1124.Google Scholar
Hains, S. M. J., & Muir, D. W. (1996). Effects of stimulus contingency in infant-adult interactions. Infant Behavior and Development 19, 49–61.Google Scholar
Hay, D. F. (1997). Postpartum depression and cognitive development. In L. Murray & P. J. Cooper (Eds.), Postpartum depression and child development. New York: Guilford Press.
Hay, D. F., & Kumar, R. (1995). Interpreting the effects of mothers' postnatal depression on children's intelligence: A critique and reanalysis. Child Psychiatry and Human Development 25, 165–181.Google Scholar
Hay, D. F., Pawlby, S., Sharpe, D., Asten, P., Mills, A., & Kumar, R. (2001). Intellectual problems shown by 11-year-old children whose mothers had postnatal depression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, 871–889.Google Scholar
Kochanska, G. (1994). Beyond cognition: Expanding the search for the early roots of internalization and conscience. Developmental Psychology 30, 20–33.Google Scholar
Kogan, N., & Carter, A. S. (1996). Mother–infant re-engagement following the Still-face: The role of maternal emotional availability in infant affect regulation. Infant Behavior and Development 19, 359–370.Google Scholar
Kopp, C. B. (1982). Antecedents of self-regulation: A developmental perspective. Developmental Psychology 18, 199–214.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. (1993). Early socioemotional predictors of cognitive competence at 4 years. Developmental Psychology 29, 1036–1045.Google Scholar
Lewis, M., Alessandri, S. M., & Sullivan, M. W. (1990). Violation of expectancy, loss of control and anger expressions in young infants. Developmental Psychology 26, 745–751.Google Scholar
Lewis, M., & Brooks–Gunn, J. (1979). Social cognition and the aquisition of self. New York: Plenum Press.
Lewis, M., & Goldberg, S. (1969). Perceptual–cognitive development in infancy: A generalized expectancy model as a function of mother–infant interaction. Merrill–Palmer Quarterly 3, 307–316.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, C. M., Graczyk, P. A., O'Hare, E., & Neuman, G. (2000). Maternal depression and parenting behaviour: A meta-analysis review. Clinical Psychology Review 20, 561–592.Google Scholar
Lyons–Ruth, K., Zoll, D., Connell, D., & Grunebaum, H. U. (1986). The depressed mother and her one-year-old infant: Environment, interaction, attachment and infant development. In E. Z. Tronick & T. Field (Eds.), Maternal depression and infant disturbance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass.
Maccoby, E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent–child interactions. In P. H. Mussen & E. M. Hetherington (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social development (4th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Mayes, L. C., & Carter, A. C. (1990). Emerging social-regulatory capacities as seen in the still face situation. Child Development 61, 754–763.Google Scholar
Moore, G. A., Cohn, J. F., & Campbell, S. B. (2001). Infant affective responses to mother's still face at 6 months differentially predicts externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 18 months. Developmental Psychology 37, 706–714.Google Scholar
Murray, L. (1980). The sensitivities and expressive capacities of young infants in communication with their mothers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Murray, L. (1992). The impact of postnatal depression on infant development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 33, 543–561.Google Scholar
Murray, L., & Carothers, A. (1990). The validation of the Edinburgh Post-natal Depression Scale on a community sample. British Journal of Psychiatry 157, 288–290.Google Scholar
Murray, L., & Cooper, P. J. (2003). Intergenerational transmission of affective and cognitive processes associated with depression: Infancy and the pre-school years. In I. M. Goodyer (Ed.), Unipolar depression: A lifetime perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Murray, L., Fiori–Cowley, A., Hooper, R., & Cooper, P. J. (1996). The impact of postnatal depression and associated adversity on early mother–infant interactions and later child outcome. Child Development 67, 2512–2526.Google Scholar
Murray, L., Hipwell, A., Hooper, R., Stein, A., & Cooper, P. J. (1996). The cognitive development of five year old children of postnatally depressed mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 37, 927–936.Google Scholar
Murray, L., Kempton, C., Woogar, R., & Hooper, R. (1993). Depressed mothers' speech to their infants and its relation to infant gender and cognitive development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 34, 1083–1101.Google Scholar
Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1985). Emotional regulation of interactions between 2 month olds and their mothers. In T. M. Field & N. A. Fox (Eds.), Social perception in infants. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Oates, J. (1998). Risk factors for infant attrition and low engagement in experiments and free play. Infant Behavior and Development 21, 555–569.Google Scholar
Rothbart, M. K., & Derryberry, D. (1981). Development of individual differences in temperament. In M. E. Lamb & A. L. Brown (Eds.), Advances in developmental psychology (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rovee–Collier, C. (1995). Time windows in cognitive development. Developmental Psychology 31, 147–169.Google Scholar
Rutter, M. (1966). Children of sick parents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rutter, M. (1997). Maternal depression and infant development: Cause and consequence; sensitivity and specificity. In L. Murray & P. J. Cooper (Eds.), Postpartum depression and child development. New York: Guilford Press.
Segel, L. B., Oster, H., Cohn, M., Capsi, B., Myers, M., & Brown, D. (1996). Smiling and fussing in seven month old pre-term and full-term black infants in the Still-face situation. Child Development 66, 1829–1843.Google Scholar
Sharpe, D., Hay, D. F., Pawlby, S., Schucker, G., Allen, H., & Kumar, R. (1995). The impact of postnatal depression on boys' intellectual development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 36, 1315–1333.Google Scholar
Sinclair, D., & Murray, L. (1998). Teacher reports of adjustment to school of postnatally depressed and well mothers' children. British Journal of Psychiatry 172, 1315–1337.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Endicott, J., & Robbins, E. (1978). Research diagnostic criteria: Rationale and reliability. Archives of General Psychiatry 35, 773–782.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. L., Williams, B. W., Gibbon, M., & First, M. B. (1990). Structured clinical interview for DSM-III-R, nonpatient edition. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Press.
Stein, A., Gath, D. H., Butcher, J., Bond, A., Day, A., & Cooper, P. J. (1991). The relationship between postnatal depression and mother–child interaction. British Journal of Psychiatry 158, 46–52.Google Scholar
Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. New York: Basic Books.
Teti, D. M., & Gelfand, D. M. (1991). Behavioural competence among mothers of infants in the first year: The mediational role of maternal self-efficacy. Child Development 62, 918–929.Google Scholar
Teti, D. M., Gelfand, D. M., Messinger, D. S., & Isabella, R. (1995). Maternal depression and the quality of early attachment: An examination of infants, preschoolers and their mothers. Developmental Psychology 31, 364–376.Google Scholar
Toda, S., & Fogel, A. (1993). Infant response to the Still-face situation at 3 and 6 months. Developmental Psychology 29, 532–538.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, C., Murray, L., & Hubley, P. A. (1981). Psychology of infants. In J. A. Davis & J. Dobbing (Eds.), Scientific foundations of paediatrics (2nd ed.). London: Heinemann.
Tronick, E. Z., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). The infants' response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face to face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 17, 1–13.Google Scholar
UK Registrar General Office of Population Census and Surveys. (OPCS). (1980). Classification of occupations. London: HMSO.
Watson, J. S. (1979). Perception of contingency as a determinant of social responsiveness. In E. B. Thoman (Ed.), Origins of the infant's social responsiveness. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Weinberg, M. K., & Tronick, E. Z. (1996). Infant affective reactions to the resumption of maternal interaction after the Still-face. Child Development 67, 905–914.Google Scholar