Research reportTransgenerational effects of maternal depression on affect recognition in children
Introduction
There is ample empirical evidence for an association between maternal depression and a range of adverse child behavioral (Lee and Gotlib, 1991) and emotional outcomes (for review, see: Beardslee et al., 2011, Goodman et al., 2011). Children of depressed parents often show diminished affect regulation and cognitive and language functioning when their mothers are depressed (e.g., Carter et al., 2001; Cicchetti et al., 1998; Rohde et al., 2005). They are at risk for developing depressive disorders themselves (Sim and England, 2009) and other internalizing and externalizing disorders (Lyons-Ruth et al., 1997). However, the factors contributing to the transgenerational transmission of depression have not been fully elucidated. One psychological factor contributing to the risk of transmission might be altered affect recognition in mothers, such as difficulties in correctly interpreting and responding to facial expressions.
In adults, a number of studies have investigated alterations in facial affect recognition in depression. These studies consistently showed an increased accuracy of, and increased response bias for sad faces (Arteche et al., 2011, Gollan et al., 2010, Gollan et al., 2008, Gur et al., 1992, Hale, 1998, Lee et al., 2008, Mandal and Bhattacharya, 1985, Sterzer et al., 2011, Surguladze et al., 2004). These emotional-cognitive deficits seem to persist during remission (Bhagwagar and Cowen, 2008, Bouhuys et al., 1999, Fuhr et al., 2014, Joormann and Gotlib, 2007, Lange et al., 2012). The question arises whether biased affect recognition might be transmitted from affected mothers to their children. Investigations addressing this question have only recently begun and suggest that alterations in affect recognition may also exist in children of depressed mothers. The alterations seem mainly to concern sad affects (Joormann et al., 2010; Lopez‐Duran et al., 2013). To the best of our knowledge, to date no studies exist that have directly investigated parallels in affect recognition in mother–child dyads.
We here studied affect recognition in both mothers with remitted depression and their children to address the question of whether biased affect recognition in remitted depressed mothers corresponds with respective alterations in their children.
Patients with depression often report a history of traumatization, such as physical or sexual abuse (Heim et al., 2008, Lizardi et al., 1995, McCabe et al., 2009). Based on neurobiological (Heim et al., 2008, Vythilingam et al., 2002) and treatment studies (Nemeroff et al., 2003), it has been suggested that depressed patients with and without trauma represent two distinct subgroups of depression. This distinction may be critical for the investigation of affect recognition, as history of trauma has – independently of depression - been associated with altered affect recognition. However, these alterations seem to concern biased anger and fear processing mainly (Dannlowski et al., 2012, Poljac et al., 2011, Rauch et al., 2000, Shin et al., 2005, van Harmelen et al., 2010). To account for effects of trauma, we here distinguished between remitted depressed mothers with and without history of trauma (i.e., physical or sexual abuse).
We tested two hypotheses in the present study. First, we predicted that mothers with remitted depression would exhibit higher accuracy and a response bias for sad faces. Second, we hypothesized that children of remitted depressed mothers would show corresponding alterations.
To study these hypotheses we performed an affect recognition task in mothers with remitted depression and their children. We tested for parallels between mothers and children both at group and at dyadic level. At group level, we investigated whether group differences observed between depression and control mothers were analogously found in children. At dyadic level, we examined whether maternal and children's abilities in affect recognition for sad facial expressions were correlated.
Section snippets
Participants
The current study involved 81 mothers (N=23 healthy controls, N=20 remitted depression only, N=38 remitted depression with trauma) and their children (n=16 of healthy control mothers, n=15 of remitted depressed mothers, n=29 of remitted depressed mothers with history of trauma). Mean time elapsed since last depressive episode was 54.7 months (range: four to 318 months). Mean number of depressive episodes was 2.2 (range: one to six). The majority (84.0%) of remitted depressed mothers had
Response times
Mothers: In mothers, we did not find a main effect of group (F(2,69)=2.619, p>.05; η2=.07), but the main effect of affect was significant (F(3,207)=446.002, p≤.001; η2=.87): participants identified happy faces earlier compared to the other affects. This was consistent across groups indicated by a non-significant group by affect interaction (F(6,207)=1.201, p>.05; η2=.034).
Children: In children, we did not find a main effect of group (F(2,52)=0.007, p>.05; η2=.00), but the main effect of affect
Discussion
This present study used a morphing task to investigate facial affect recognition in remitted depressed mothers and their children. We found striking parallels between mothers and children both at group and at dyadic level. At group level, mothers with depression in remission showed a negative processing bias during affect recognition, which was paralleled in their children who showed a similar sadness bias. At dyadic level, we found a positive correlation between maternal and child sadness
Limitations
A number of limitations of the present study may be considered. First, it is acknowledged that the total number of children in each group was relatively small (control: n=14; depression only: n=14; depression & trauma: n=27) which is due to the challenge of recruiting mother–child dyads fulfilling all inclusion criteria. Second, our stimulus material consisted of (unfamiliar) adult faces only. In doing so, we relied on an established affect recognition task (Domes et al., 2008). It will be
Conclusions
Our findings may have clinical implications for both mothers and children. Even during remission, mothers with depression showed altered affect recognition, particularly concerning sad facial expressions. This persistent processing bias might contribute to the onset of future depressive episodes in the mothers and through social learning also impact on the offspring. Indeed, our cross-sectional and correlational data suggest that the bias is transmitted to the children. In the next generation,
Financial support
This work was partially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; Grant number: 01KR1207C; www.ubica.de); and the German Research Foundation (DFG; Grant number: BE2611/2-1).
Conflict of interest
None.
Ethical standards
The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
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