Poster #97 - Mother-child elaborative reminiscing as a moderator between intimate partner violence and physiological stress regulation

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) affects child stress physiology such that conflict in the home has deleterious effects on children’s HPA axis regulation, often measured through cortisol levels and slope (e.g. Bair-Merritt, Johnson, Okelo, & Page, 2012). Because the HPA axis oversees other aspects of biological functioning, HPA dysregulation can lead to a multitude of effects including immune deficiencies and depression (Chrousos & Gold, 1992). However, maternal support has been identified as a potential buffer against the effects of stress on child health (Hositnar & Gunnar, 2015). Therefore, one potential way to reduce the maladaptive outcomes associated with IPV may be to increase maternal social support through mother-child discussions of past emotional experiences (i.e. reminiscing). Sensitive parental responsivity during reminiscing allows children to experience their negative emotions and to communicate them to caregivers in a safe environment, without causing increases in physiological arousal (Gunnar & Donzella, 2002). Emotional expression in a responsive environment may improve emotion regulation, leading to better physiological regulation and fewer health issues. This study examines the association between IPV and child physiological symptoms of stress and investigates whether maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing may buffer the effects of IPV on child cortisol levels and slope.
Participants included 239 children and their mothers. Dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about four past shared emotional experiences that was coded using the procedure outlined by Koren-Karie et al. (2003) to yield a measure of the quality of mothers’ reminiscing using a series of 9-point Likert scales. Inter-rater reliability was assessed using 20% of the videos (intraclass correlation coefficients of individual subscales ranged from a=0.71 to a=0.93). Mothers also completed the short form of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2S), to create a composite score for IPV by summing ratings for occurrences of psychological aggression, physical assault, and sexual coercion. Salivary samples were collected three times per day (waking, midday, bedtime) for two consecutive days for the child. A highly sensitive immunoassay was used to assay salivary samples for cortisol at Salimetrics (Salimetrics, State College, PA). Cortisol levels and slope were examined using Area Under the Curve (Pruessner et al., 2003). Compliance to salivary collection protocol was examined and used as a covariate. Each family’s child welfare records were coded for child maltreatment using the Maltreatment Classification System (Barnett, Manly, & Cicchetti, 1993), and maltreatment was used as a covariate.
Two linear regressions were performed—one for cortisol levels and one for cortisol slope. IPV had a significant direct effect on child cortisol slope such that high IPV predicted blunted cortisol slopes (b=-0.013, SE=-2.513, p=0.001). However, IPV did not have a significant direct effect on child cortisol levels (b=0.001, SE=0.135, n.s.). Additionally, maternal reminiscing quality moderated associations between IPV and cortisol slope such that in families with high IPV, slopes were less blunted when maternal reminiscing quality was high (b=0.009, SE=2.017, p=0.044). These findings imply that perhaps one way in which the deleterious effects of IPV on child health can be reduced is by improving maternal reminiscing quality.

Authors

• Savannah Pfeffer, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Ruth Speidel, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaitlin Fondren, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Monica Lawson, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author