Maternal Depression and Autobiographical Memory in Mothers and Their Children

Research Scholar AwardAutobiographical memory (AM), the capacity of retrieving personally experienced events, develops throughout childhood. Memory specificity increases with age and overgeneralized AM is significantly associated with onset of psychological disorders. The way mothers talk about shared past experiences, known as maternal reminiscing style, even at young ages, has been shown to predict the specificity of AM in children. The current study examines the influence of depression on AM and reminiscing style in mothers and how these factors influence AM specificity in young children. Participants included 82 mothers (49 depressed) and their children (45 girls); the mean age of children was 3.24 years (SD = 0.21). Trained staff coded AM specificity using videos of the participants according to the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). Reminiscing quality of the participants was measured by the Autobiographical and Emotional Events Dialogues (AEED) coding manual. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Based on the 82 pairs coded, maternal depressive symptoms was negatively correlated with maternal reminiscing quality (r = -.25, p = .02) but unrelated to AM specificity. Child specificity scores were positively associated with maternal reminiscing quality (r = .49, p < .001) and AM specificity (r = .68, p < .001). It was also seen that maternal reminiscing quality (β = .45, p < .01) and maternal AM specificity (β = .57, p < .01) predict child AM specificity, but maternal depressive symptoms were not predictive of child AM specificity (β = -.01, p = .932). Lastly, there was a significant interaction for maternal reminiscing quality and child gender (p = 0.016), in that female children’s specificity was positively correlated with the reminiscing quality of the mother (β = 0.454, p < 0.001). Findings suggest that depression and reduced reminiscing quality in mothers impacted their children’s AM and reminiscing by age 3.No embargoAcademic Major: Psycholog