Depressed Mothers’ Voices

By: Garry Cooper, LCSW

Reprinted with permission from Psychotherapy Networker magazine. Copyright, Psychotherapy Networker, Inc.

 

Researchers have demonstrated that most adults use lively voices when they speak to babies, and it appears that this phenomenon, which is present in all cultures, actually stimulates babies’ brains and promotes neural development and learning. Psychologist Peter Kaplan, at the University of Colorado in Denver, has found that clinically depressed mother’’ voices are more flat when they speak to their infants, with the result that the infants are less likely to respond and learn.

Kaplan’s study. In the May, 1999 journal Child Development, used audiotapes of 23 mothers, 5 of whom were clinically depressed, encouraging their infants to pet a toy gorilla. Then he had 225 different 4-month old infants listen to the tapes while sitting in a darkened room facing a blank, softly lit screen. First the babies were conditioned to associate voice and face: researchers repeatedly played a tape of a mother’s voice, followed by silence and then an image of a woman’s smiling face. Then voice and silence were followed by a slide of a checkerboard instead of a face. When the babies who had listened to depressed mothers were shown the checkerboard without the voice preceding it, they stared at it significantly less time: the depressed voices had apparently not stimulated the babies enough for them to associate face and checkerboard.

Vanderbilt University psychologist Jo-Anne Bachorowski, who specializes in acoustic research, also analyzed the tapes and confirmed that the only difference among the 23 tapes was that depressed mothers’ voices were flatter, with markedly fewer variations in pitch.

Kaplan says that his findings underscore the importance that depressed mothers recognize their condition, so that they can try to put more liveliness into their voices, either by conscious effort or by being treated for depression. Because any lively child-directed voice stimulates babies, Kaplan suggests that depressed mothers also encourage relatives, day care workers and friends to talk to their babies.