Investigating the impact of parental status and depression symptoms on the early perceptual coding of infant faces: An event-related potential study

Abstract

Infant faces are highly salient social stimuli that appear to elicit intuitive parenting behaviors in healthy adult women. Behavioral and observational studies indicate that this effect may be modulated by experiences of reproduction, caregiving, and psychiatric symptomatology that affect normative attention and reward processing of infant cues. However, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of these effects. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study investigated the impact of parental status (mother, non-mother) and depression symptoms on early visual processing of infant faces in a community sample of adult women. Specifically, the P1 and N170 ERP components elicited in response to infant face stimuli were examined. While characteristics of the N170 were not modulated by parental status, a statistically significant positive correlation was observed between depression symptom severity and N170 amplitude. This relationship was not observed for the P1. These results suggest that depression symptoms may modulate early neurophysiological responsiveness to infant cues, even at sub-clinical levels.

Keywords:

• Infant face
• Parenting
• Depression
• ERP/EEG, N170

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Alice Proverbio, who provided the infant stimuli used in this project, and Max Greger-Moser for his assistance with collection of EEG data. This work was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree of MSc in Psychodynamic Developmental Neuroscience by L.K.N., and it was funded by the Anna Freud Centre (UK).