JAMA Netw Open: How do mothers' emotions affect their offspring's speech ability? Postpartum depression may be seriously affected!

Scientists from institutions such as the Freie Universität Berlin have investigated how babies distinguish speech according to their mother's emotions, which is considered an important prerequisite
for further progress towards perfecting language development.

Up to 70 percent of mothers suffer from postpartum depression after birth, and some studies suggest that this may affect the child's own development and the formation of his language, but until now, researchers did not know exactly how
this damage manifests itself during early infant language development.

Recently, in a research report entitled "Association of Postpartum Maternal Mood With Infant Speech Perception at 2 and 6.
5 Months of Age" published in the international journal JAMA Network Open, scientists from Freie Universität Berlin and other institutions investigated how babies distinguish speech according to their mother's emotions.
This ability is considered an important prerequisite
for further progress towards perfecting language development.

If sounds can be distinguished from each other, then individual times can also be distinguished from each other, and it is clear that if mothers show more negative emotions after two months of life, their children will show less mature speech processing skills
by 6 months of age 。 These infants have particular difficulty distinguishing the pitch of syllables, specifically, they exhibit a later development of response mismatches than those whose mothers are more emotionally positive, and this response mismatch (Mismatch Response) in turn can be used as a measure of the extent to which a person can distinguish between sounds, and if the development towards a pronounced misplaced response is slowed, it is often assumed that a person's risk of developing speech disorder later in life increases
。

Researcher Gesa Schaadt said, "We speculate that affected mothers use less infantile instructional language and may use fewer pitch changes when guiding their babies to speak, which also leads to more limited perception of different tones, which is considered a prerequisite for
further speech development.
" 。 The results suggest that parents' use of infant-guided language is important for future children's language development, and that infant-guided speech that changes in pitch may emphasize specific parts of the word more clearly, allowing them to focus on what is being said, which is considered appropriate for children's
language development and development.

How do the mother's emotions affect the offspring's ability to speak?

Image credit: JAMA Network Open (2022).
DOI:10.
1001/jamanetworkopen.
2022.
32672

Mothers affected by depression often use more monotonous and less infant guidance language, and to ensure the healthy development of young children, appropriate support may also be required for mothers with mild discomfort, which usually does not require excessive additional treatment, does not necessarily require organized intervention, and sometimes requires too much involvement
of the father 。 In the article, the researchers investigated these relationships with the help of 46 mothers who reported different postpartum emotions after childbirth, which can often be measured using standardized questionnaires for diagnosing postpartum upset, and Eye Eye Garden used electroencephalography to help determine how babies distinguish between different language sounds
.

The so-called response misalignment is used for this purpose, where a specific EEG signal shows how well the brain processes and differentiates between different language sounds, and the researchers recorded this response in two- and six-month-old babies, showing them multiple syllables, such as "ba," "ga," and "bu
.
" In summary, the results of this study suggest that infants' verbal perception trajectories may be related to subclinical emotions of postpartum mothers, and this finding may lay a certain foundation
for scientists to further study the positive effect of early support from caregivers who experience depressed emotions on children's language development.
(Bio Valley Bioon.
com)

Original source:

Gesa Schaadt, PhD1,2; Rachel G.
Zsido, BA3,4; Arno Villringer, MD3,5; et al Association of Postpartum Maternal Mood With Infant Speech Perception at 2 and 6.
5 Months of Age, JAMA Network Open (2022).
DOI: 10.
1001/jamanetworkopen.
2022.
32672