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Maternal Depressive Symptoms, Mother-Child Interactions, and Children's Executive Function

Gueron-Sela, N., Camerota, M., Willoughby, M. T., Vernon-Feagans, L., Cox, M. J., & the Family Life Project Key Investigators
2018

From the abstract: "This study examined the independent and mediated associations between maternal depression symptoms (MDS), mother-child interaction, and child executive function (EF) in a prospective longitudinal sample of 1,037 children (50% boys) from predominantly low-income and rural communities... Results indicated that MDS at ages 15 and 24 months were negatively associated with children's EF at age 48 months. Additionally, harsh-intrusive mother-child interactions partially mediated this link. Although warmth-sensitivity, dyadic joint attention and maternal language complexity were all longitudinally related to EF, they did not serve as mediating mechanisms between MDS and EF... Findings from this study identify one mechanism through which early exposure to MDS could be related to children's EF."

Citation

Gueron-Sela, N., Camerota, M., Willoughby, M. T., Vernon-Feagans, L., Cox, M. J., & the Family Life Project Key Investigators. (2018). Maternal depressive symptoms, mother-child interactions, and children's executive function. Developmental Psychology, 54, 71-82.

DOI

10.1037/dev0000389