Infant-directed speech produced by fathers with symptoms of depression: Effects on infant associative learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm

Infant-directed (ID) speech produced by fathers who varied in their number of self-reported symptoms of depressed was analyzed for differences its ability to promote infant voice-face associative learning. Infants of fathers with elevated scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) showed significantly poorer learning than did infants of fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores when their fathers' ID speech served as a conditioned stimulus for a face reinforcer in a conditioned-attention paradigm. Fathers with elevated BDI-II scores produced ID speech with marginally significantly lower F-0 variability than fathers with non-elevated BDI-II scores. However, F-0-related cues were uncorrelated with infant learning. Overall, fathers' ID speech contained significantly less F-0 modulation than did mothers' ID speech. These findings show that paternal depression, like maternal depression, adversely affects infant learning in a conditioned-attention paradigm. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.