Poster #147 - Maternal Responsiveness and Children's Hot and Cold Executive Functions

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Children’s executive functions refer to a family of control processes needed for thinking and concentration. Within this family, inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility are considered the foundation of higher order executive functions (Diamond, 2013). Numerous researchers have argued that parents play an important role in children’s development of executive functions.

Studies of mother-child interactions in free-play or teaching settings have shown that maternal responsiveness is positively associated with the development of children’s executive functioning (see review by Fay-Stammbach et al., 2014). However, because most of these studies used global ratings of maternal responsiveness, less is known about the specific aspects of maternal responsiveness that are associated with children’s executive functions during the preschool years. Given that maternal responsiveness is not global in its efficacy (Bornstein et al., 2008), determining which aspects of responsiveness are associated with later individual differences in preschoolers’ behaviors is key for moving the field forward. Researchers should also consider less structured settings to assess maternal behavior, where the mother is not explicitly or implicitly expected to be responsive to her child.

This study used molecular coding to explore the impact of maternal responsiveness during a mother-busy task on preschoolers’ hot and cold executive functions at two times in development. In this study, executive functions at age six were predicted from maternal responsiveness at age four, controlling for executive functions at the first time point

One hundred and thirty eight low-income, Latina mothers of preschool children participated. When the children were 4-years-old, mothers were observed in a “mother-busy” situation where children had to wait to open a present while their mothers completed a questionnaire. All child verbal and nonverbal bids to elicit maternal attention were coded. Mother responses to child bids were coded into six categories, three that showed sufficiently high frequency for analysis: high turning toward (responses that encouraged further interaction), low turning toward (responses that acknowledged the bid, but did not encourage further interaction), and turning away (ignoring the child). Also at the first timepoint and 18 months later, children completed two executive functioning tasks in the absence of their mothers: a measure of cold executive functioning (The Flexible Item Selection Task developed by Jacques & Zelazo, 2001) and a measure of hot executive functioning (Mischel & Ebbesen’s 1970 delay of gratification task).

Concurrent correlations at the first timepoint showed that cold executive functioning was related to maternal responses to children’s verbal bids for attention--positively associated with low maternal turning toward and negatively associated with maternal turning away. In contrast, multiple regressions predicting changes in hot executive functioning showed that high turning toward responses to verbal attention bids were positively associated with changes in hot executive functioning over time, whereas low turning toward responses to verbal bids and turning away responses to nonverbal bids were negatively associated with changes in executive functioning. No other relationships between parenting and children’s executive functioning were significant. Implications of these findings for understanding maternal influences on the development of executive functioning in early childhood are considered.

Authors

• Veronica Bonilla-Pacheco, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• Thomas G Power, Washington State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jackelyn Hidalgo, Washington State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Orlet Fisher, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Teresia M O'Connor, Baylor College of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sheryl O Hughes, Baylor College of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author