This study seeks to contribute to the existing corpus of knowledge related to infants' emotional regulation abilities by examining the effectiveness of regulatory strategies employed by infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers in fear and anger eliciting situations. It is proposed that infants of depressed mothers will be more reactive to stimuli that elicit fear or anxiety and that their regulatory strategies will be less effective at reducing displays of negative affect than infants of nondepressed mothers. It is further hypothesized that infants of depressed mothers will use less social (turning toward mother) regulatory strategies than infants of nondepressed mothers. Mothers and their infants will be recruited in conjunction with an NIH-funded project, Clinician Managed Interpersonal Psychotherapy (PI: Scott Stuart). Data will be collected using four scenarios from the Laboratory Assessment of Temperament and Behavior (Lab-TAB). The reactivity of infants will be coded using the system developed in association with the Lab-TAB. Emotional regulation behaviors, as well as, the effectiveness of those behaviors will be measured using a coding system developed by Buss and Goldsmith (1998).
