This study examined the abilities of 40 Latina mothers and their 6-
to 11-year-old children (20 girls, 20 boys) to recognize and produce
emotion expressions and how these abilities differed as a function of
maternal depressive symptoms. The results indicated that depressively
symptomatic mothers were less accurate at recognizing basic emotions
(e.g., happy, sad, etc.) and some mixed emotions (e.g., scared/ok
combinations) than nonsymptomatic mothers, but there were no group
differences for emotion production. In contrast, children of
symptomatic mothers posed fewer recognizable sad expressions than their
peers. Error pattern analyses also revealed that children of
symptomatic mothers were more likely to mistakenly recognize happiness
and to avoid posing sadness (across all basic emotions).
Children's ability to pose emotions was related to their
mothers' emotion production, and this was not moderated by
maternal depressive symptoms. The discussion focuses on the possible
interpersonal consequences of these biases and deficits in the
emotion-related abilities of symptomatic mothers and their children and
on the need to conduct research on the familial and cultural processes
that might underlie these findings.Portions of this article are based on a dissertation by
Maria Sesin submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the doctoral degree at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva
University. We would like to thank the mothers and children who made
this research possible, as well as Marjorie Melendez and Craig
Indellicati for their help in preparing the emotion recognition
stimuli.