Poster #58 - Maternal Depression and Expressive Language Development During Early Childhood: The Mediating Role of Intrusiveness

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Background: Roughly 5% of U.S children are diagnosed with a speech disorder (Black et al., 2015), and many more experience delays in language that do not reach criteria (Hoffman et al., 2015). Social and communication development in children can be greatly hindered by maternal depression (Chorbadjian et al., 2020). Mother-child relationships are increasingly recognized as critical mechanisms in the relation between maternal depression and social-emotional child outcomes (Baker, 2018), but little is known about how they specifically impact expressive language development. This study examined how intrusiveness in mother-child relationships may mediate the relation between maternal depression and children’s expressive language abilities during early childhood.

Methods: Mother-child dyads (N=723) came from a nationally representative sample of families in Early Head Start (Baby FACES; Vogel & Boller, 2015) across ages 1-3 years. Maternal depression symptoms were assessed at age 1 (CESD-Short Form; Ross et al., 1983), and split into mothers who met criteria for a least mild depression (n=280) and those who did not (n=443). Intrusive parenting was measured observationally at age 2, and expressive language abilities were measured using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory at age 3 (Fenson et al., 2000). Analyses were conducted with path analysis with full information maximum likelihood and longitudinal weighting, and sociodemographic covariates were included in analyses.

Results: Children who experienced greater intrusiveness from their mothers at age 2 exhibited significantly less developed expressive language abilities at age 3 (Figure 1). Woman who experienced at least mild depressive symptoms at age 1 also displayed significantly more intrusive behaviors at age 2. However, depressive symptoms were not significantly related to expressive language abilities. While the individual pathways were significant, the indirect (or mediated) effect was not significant, 95% C.I. [-10.62, 2.77]. Although correlations (Table 1) indicated significant associations between less expressive language and being male, a teen mother, unemployment, and less education, these covariates were not significant in the final model.

Conclusions: Maternal depressive symptoms were associated with increased intrusive parenting behaviors, which were consequently associated with reduced language development. Maternal depression has been associated with increased negative emotionality and coercion in parenting, and reduces support of child-orientated goals (Hanif, 2021). Similarly, intrusive parenting has shown to directly impact communicative development in children. Intrusive parenting tends to use shorter, more directive utterances, and often interrupts a child’s attempt at communication. These parenting behaviors can reduce a child’s exposure to broader lexical concepts and even discourages a child’s attempt at language use (Smith et al., 2018). The lack of mediation may be due to this being a community sample with a smaller percentage of women experiencing depressive symptoms. Alternatively, all families were involved in Early Head Start, an intervention program, thus families may have received outside support or treatment which would directly address maternal depression and language development. Findings suggest further investigation on the impact of how intrusive parenting behaviors may be addressed to reduce its negative influence on language development, especially as parent-child interaction therapy becomes a more widely used therapy technique for language difficulties.

Authors

• Haley Ringenary, University of Missouri - St. Louis
  Presenting Author

• Emily D. Gerstein, University of Missouri-St. Louis