How does atypical emotional reactivity in mothers with depressive symptoms affect social learning between mothers and their infant?
This study aims to investigate how does atypical emotional reactivity in mothers with depressive symptoms affect social learning between mothers and their infant. Emotional reactivity refers to the differing levels of emotional response one has towards an event. Specifically, this study looks at...
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Format: | Final Year Project |
Language: | English |
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Nanyang Technological University
2022
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Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159233 |
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Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
Language: | English |
Summary: | This study aims to investigate how does atypical emotional reactivity in mothers with
depressive symptoms affect social learning between mothers and their infant. Emotional
reactivity refers to the differing levels of emotional response one has towards an event.
Specifically, this study looks at affective social referencing which refers to affective
communication between individuals that allows for the social interpretation of a situation. 16
mother-infants dyads performed a social learning task. Firstly, infants observed their mother
displaying positive or negative emotional expressions towards a pair of novel objects. After
which, infants freely interacted with the objects while their mothers kept a neutral facial
expression. The behaviors and emotional reactivity of mothers and infants were manually
coded. Emotional reactivity of mothers during structured and unstructured mother-infant
interactions were coded separately. Increased maternal mood scores predicted lower positive
emotional reactivity scores in mothers, but a positive trend was found with negative
emotional reactivity scores during unstructured interactions. Unexpectedly, maternal mood
scores and infant’s emotional reactivity were found to be positively correlated. Out of the two
performance indices (learning bias and learning score), learning bias produced the strongest
correlation with emotional reactivity. Positive emotional reactivity scores have a nonsignificant positive correlation with learning scores, but a significant negative relationship
was found between learning bias and positive emotional reactivity scores during structured
interaction. The limitations and theoretical implications for future research are also discussed
in this paper. |
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