Maternal Sensitivity and the Learning-Promoting Effects of Depressed and Non-Depressed Mothers' Infant-Directed Speech.

The hypothesis that aspects of current mother-infant interactions predict an infant's response to maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) was tested. Relative to infants of non-depressed mothers, those of depressed mothers acquired weaker voice-face associations in response to their own mothers' IDS in a conditioned-attention paradigm, although this was partially attributable to demographic differences between the two groups. The extent of fundamental frequency modulation (DeltaF(0)) in maternal IDS was smaller for infants of depressed than non-depressed mothers, but did not predict infant learning.

Infant-directed speech produced by fathers with symptoms of depression: effects on infant associative learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm.

Infant-directed (ID) speech produced by fathers who varied in their number of self-reported symptoms of depressed was analyzed for differences its ability to promote infant voice-face associative learning. Infants of fathers with elevated scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) showed significantly poorer learning than did infants of fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores when their fathers' ID speech served as a conditioned stimulus for a face reinforcer in a conditioned-attention paradigm. Fathers with elevated BDI-II scores produced ID speech with marginally significantly lower F0 variability than fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores.