Associations Between Mother-Infant Affect Synchrony and Infants’ Frontal EEG Asymmetry in Infants of Mothers at Risk for Perinatal Depression Open Access

Abstract

 

Positive affect synchrony during mother-infant interactions is crucial for infants’ development of emotional self-regulation. Frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry indexes infant orientation toward either greater withdrawal and negative emotions or greater approach and positive emotions. Taking these two considerations into account, we hypothesized that mother-infant positive affect synchrony would be associated with individual differences in infant EEG frontal asymmetry patterns. Therefore, we examined the relationship between proportion of mother-infant positive affective synchrony and infant frontal EEG asymmetry scores during a mother-infant play activity at 3-, 6-, and 12-months of age. Additionally, given that depression in mothers has been shown to be associated with both lower mother-infant positive affect synchrony and infants’ greater relative right frontal EEG asymmetry, we sampled mothers at risk for perinatal depression and examined the extent to which the association between mother-infant positive affect synchrony and infants’ frontal EEG asymmetry varied by mothers’ postnatal depression status. Contrary to our hypothesis, for the sample as a whole, proportion of time in mother-infant positive affect synchrony was not significantly associated with infant frontal EEG asymmetry, regardless of infant age. Consistent with our hypothesis, for mothers with recent major depressive episodes, in contrast to those with no recent episodes, there was a significant and moderate negative correlation when the infant was 6-months of age and a non-significant, yet moderate negative correlation when the infant was 12-months of age. Our findings suggest that there is an association between proportion of time spent in positive affect synchrony and infant frontal EEG asymmetry for infants of mothers who experience a major depressive episode between the second and fourth quartiles postpartum.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..2

Current Study…………………………………………………………...................6

Method…………………………………………………………………………...…..……7

Results……………………………………………………………………………………14

Discussion………………………………………………………………………………..16

References………………………………………………………………………………..22

Tables and Figures……………………………………………………………………….29

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Cognition and Development
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Psychobiology Psychology, General Psychology, Clinical
Keyword	infancy depression EEG synchrony
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Goodman, Sherryl, Emory University
Committee Members	Frenzel, Kristen, Emory University Brennan, Patricia, Emory University

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