Poster #158 - The Impact of Mother Cognitive Reappraisal Training on Maternal and Adolescent Distress Following Conflict

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Adolescence can be broadly defined as “that awkward period between sexual maturation and the attainment of adult roles and responsibilities “ (Dahl, 2004, p. 9). It is a developmental period characterized by a change in social roles interspersed by changes in biology and development. Notably, parent-adolescent conflict is common and considered a normative part of adolescent development (e.g., Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998; Steinberg, 2001). Critically, evidence suggests conflict is more frequent and intense in families with anxiety disorders (Drake & Kearny, 2008; Hinton, Rasmussen, Nou, Pollack, & Good, 2002; Jordan et al., 1992). Further, conflict likely maintains anxiety symptoms (Nayback-Beebe & Yoder, 2011). Indeed, stressful interactions with offspring are related to increased parental and offspring and anxiety (Steinberg & Steinberg, 1994). Therefore, parent-adolescent conflict may maintain parental and adolescent anxiety by increasing distress.
The affective impact of parent-offspring conflict is likely malleable (Blake & Hamrin, 2007). For instance, distress reduction training decreases physiological arousal during interpersonal conflict (Ewart, Taylor, Kraemer, & Agras, 1984). Distress reductions skills such as cognitive reappraisal may be particularly helpful in this regard. Cognitive reappraisal refers to reinterpreting the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations to allow for more effective management of negative emotions (Gross, 2002). Laboratory evidence suggests that individuals who use cognitive reappraisal to consider an interpersonal conflict from a third-party perspective show reduced anger and distress than participants who were asked to ruminate on a conflict, or participants who were given no instructions (Ray, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2008). Further, cognitive reappraisal has successfully been employed to prospectively reduce martial conflict over a period of several years (Finkel, Slotter, Luchies, Walton, & Gross, 2013). To date, little work has examined if cognitive re-appraisal can be used to reduce conflict-elicited distress among mothers who are elevated in anxiety and their adolescent offspring. Therefore it was hypothesized that following a baseline conflict task, mothers who receive cognitive re-appraisal training (experimental condition) relative to education about adolescent brain development (control condition) will report less distress following a second conflict task. It was also hypothesized that adolescents of mothers in the experimental condition would report reduced conflict-elicited distress compared to adolescents of mothers in the control condition.
75 mother-adolescent dyads with offspring between the ages of 12 and 16 years (Mage =13.78 years, SD =1.35 years, 41 males) participated in this data collection. Mixed linear modeling indicated that results were in the expected directions. Specifically, experimental condition interacted with time such that adolescents in the experimental condition report feeling happier after the second conflict task compared to baseline than adolescents in the control condition (t =2.25, p = .025). In addition, although there was no main effect of training, experimental condition interacted with offspring gender and time such that mothers of daughters in the experimental condition reported higher levels of happiness than mothers of daughters in the control condition, while the reverse was true for sons (t =2.40, p = .017) Discussion will address the role of cognitive reappraisal in reducing conflict-elicited distress among parent-adolescent dyads in which mothers have elevated anxiety.

Authors

• Sarah Bilsky, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author

• Matthew Feldner, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ellen Leen-Feldner, University of Arkansas
  Non-Presenting Author