Maternal depressive symptoms and 6-month-old infants' sensitivity to facial expressions

Examined 6-mo-old infants' abilities to discriminate smiling and frowning from neutral stimuli. In addition, the authors assessed the relationship between infants' preferences for varying intensities of smiling and frowning facial expressions and their mothers' history of depressive symptoms. 46 infants were presented pairs of facial expressions, and their preferential looking time was recorded. They also participated in a 3-min interaction with their mothers for which duration of both mother and infant gazing and smiling were coded. Analyses revealed that the infants reliably discriminated between varying intensities of smiling an frowning facial expressions and a paired neutral expression. In addition, infants' preferences for smiling and frowning expressions were related to self-reports of maternal depressive symptoms experienced since the birth of the infant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved)