Depression moderates maternal response to preschoolers' positive affect

Maternal depression is associated with disrupted responsiveness during mother-infant dyadic interactions. Less research has evaluated whether responsivity between mother and offspring is altered in interactions during the preschool years, a period of vast socio-emotional development. In the current study, 72 mothers and preschoolers engaged in a positive emotion-eliciting task, in which they drew and talked about a recent fun experience, and independent coders separately rated mother and child emotion in 10-s intervals. Lagged multilevel models demonstrated that for dyads withcurrentlydepressed mothers, but not for healthy mothers or mothers with apasthistory of depression, greater child positive affect was associated withlowerfrequency and intensity of mother positive affect 10 s later. The effect of mother positive affect on child response was not significant. Findings suggest that the ability to acknowledge, imitate, and elaborate children's positive emotion during early childhood is altered in the context of depression, but that this altered responsiveness may improve with recovery from depression.