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Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
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Mothers' depressive symptoms predict both increased and reduced negative reactivity: aversion sensitivity and the

Theodore Dix1, Anat Moed2, Edward R Anderson2

  • 1Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin teddix@austin.utexas.edu.

Psychological Science
|May 7, 2014
PubMed

This study examined whether, as mothers' depressive symptoms increase, their expressions of negative emotion to children increasingly reflect aversion sensitivity and motivation to minimize ongoing stress or discomfort. In multiple interactions over 2 years, negative affect expressed by 319 mothers and their children was observed across variations in mothers' depressive symptoms, the aversiveness of children's immediate behavior, and observed differences in children's general negative reactivity. As expected, depressive symptoms predicted reduced maternal negative reactivity when child behavior was low in aversiveness, particularly with children who were high in negative reactivity. Depressive symptoms predicted high negative reactivity and steep increases in negative reactivity as the aversiveness of child behavior increased, particularly when high and continued aversiveness from the child was expected (i.e., children were high in negative reactivity). The findings are consistent with the proposal that deficits in parenting competence as depressive symptoms increase reflect aversion sensitivity and motivation to avoid conflict and suppress children's aversive behavior.

Keywords:
childhood developmentdepressionemotionsinterpersonal interactionmotivation

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