The effect of maternal depression on mother-child dialogue at 14 months

Early social interaction lays the foundation for developing language skills. Maternal depression may affect social interaction by disrupting the temporal structure of turn-taking. In this study, we examined the temporal properties of dialogue extracted from video recordings of semi-structured play between mothers and preschool children enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Program. The primary goal of the study is understanding how depression impacts bidirectional processes in mother-child interaction, and the quality of children’s early language experience. Our analyses examined how higher levels of maternal depression were related to the total interaction time, the response latencies, the number and duration of utterances, and the number of conversational turns for both the mother and the child. Significant differences were noted in families with maternal depression playing for shorter total durations and exchanging fewer back-and-forth utterances. Children of depressed mothers vocalize significantly less frequently than children of non-depressed mothers.