In addition to lower quality touch behaviors, Herrera and colleagues (2004)
also demonstrated that depressed mothers showed less affectionate and informative
speech toward their infants, implicating a dysfunction of the entire
communication system. Speech and touch are important in interactive communication
between mothers and their infants, and depressed mothers may not
use an optimal style of communicating information to their infants resulting in
interactive difficulties. The different types of interactive behaviors, exhibited
by depressive mothers, may be a reflection of the withdrawal of the mother
from her infant even during the newborn period and would be expected
to produce negative outcomes in the infant’s physiological and behavioral
adjustment.