Facial expressions and EEG in infants of intrusive and withdrawn mothers with depressive symptoms

When intrusive and withdrawn mothers with depressive symptoms modeled happy, surprised, and sad expressions, their 3-month-old infants did not differentially respond to these expressions or show EEG changes. When a stranger modeled these expressions, the infants of intrusive vs. withdrawn mothers looked more at the surprised and sad expressions and showed greater relative right EEG activity in response to the surprise and sad expressions as compared to the happy expressions. These findings suggest that the infants of intrusive mothers with depressive symptoms showed more differential responding to the facial expressions than the infants of withdrawn mothers. In addition, the infants of intrusive vs. infants of withdrawn mothers showed increased salivary cortisol following the interactions, suggesting that they were more stressed by the interactions. (C) 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.