Maternal depression and the timing of mother–child dialogue
Corresponding Author
Nicholas A. Smith
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Correspondence
Nicholas A. Smith, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Lewis Hall 319, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorValerie F. McDaniel
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Contribution: Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorJean M. Ispa
Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Contribution: Resources, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorBob McMurray
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Nicholas A. Smith
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Correspondence
Nicholas A. Smith, Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Lewis Hall 319, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorValerie F. McDaniel
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Contribution: Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorJean M. Ispa
Department of Human Development and Family Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Contribution: Resources, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorBob McMurray
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Department of Linguistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Contribution: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - review & editing
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Turn-taking in dialogue is an essential part of communication and early language experience. The prevalence of utterances and the timing of responses in dialogue were examined at 14 and 36 months of age in 104 mother–child dyads from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHSREP). Mothers varied in their level of depression risk (measured with the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale; CES-D). Although maternal utterance rate did not vary significantly across any factors, the latency of mothers' responses to their children decreased with development (12 ms/month) and was significantly related to that of their own children (i.e., slow-responding children had slow-responding mothers). Mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms were 11% slower in responding to their children than mothers with low depression risk, suggesting that the interactive timing of speech to children may be particularly sensitive to maternal depression, modifying the contingent properties of children's early language experience.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
R scripts and data files to reproduce these analyses are available at https://osf.io/eub7d/
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