A comparison of verbalization of children with behavior problems and maltreatment history of mothers with and without depressive symptoms

Thesis (M.A., Psychology)--California State University, Sacramento, 2013.This research examined the verbalizations of clinic-referred children with a history of maltreatment and behavior problems, specifically comparing children whose mothers did or did not report clinical levels of depressive symptoms. Young children and their biological mothers comprised 158 mother-child dyads selected from the UC Davis CAARE Center archival data. Dyads were observed in a semi-structured play situation involving analogs of child-directed and parent-directed play and clean up. There were no significant differences in the total amount of verbalizations expressed by children of depressed and non-depressed mothers, nor did the ratio and frequency of child positive talk, questions, and negative talk differ by maternal depression status. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) revealed significant child verbalization differences across analogs indicating that children???s negative talk increased as situational stress increased, i.e., from child-directed play to clean up. Application of the results to existing literature, study limitations and implications for future research are discussed.Psycholog