VOCAL AND FACIAL EXPRESSION MATCHING IN INFANTS OF MOTHERS WITH DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

This study investigated vocal and facial expression matching in 24 10- month-old infants. Half of the mothers had reported depressive symptom s [i.e., elevated scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Dep ression Index (CES-D)] during the previous week. Infants were tested u sing a two-screen preference procedure in which they were presented si de-by-side videos of different facial expressions modeled by one femal e reciting a children's story. A centrally located speaker was used to present a vocal expression soundtrack that matched one of the facial expressions. Separate analyses of variances (ANOVAs) were conducted to analyze the proportion total matching and proportion total looking to the happy and sad expressions. Infants of mothers who reported depres sive symptoms displayed less accurate matching of the happy facial and vocal expressions and looked more to sad facial expressions compared to infants of mothers who had not reported depressive symptoms above t he normal range. Infants' performance on the expression matching task appears to be related to their primary caregivers' reports of depressi ve symptoms during the previous week. However, other factors that may be related to the group differences also need to be considered. For ex ample, maternal reports of depressive symptoms may be a marker for oth er underlying factors that may have affected their infants' performanc e.