Poster #157 - Warmth and Negativity in Mother-Adolescent Relationships: Associations with Adolescents’ Neural Responses to Angry Faces

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Warm, close mother-child relationships facilitate less negative emotional reactivity and more effective emotion regulation in children whereas mother-child relationships characterized by negativity hinder children’s emotion regulation (Morris et al., 2007). Children’s neurobiological responses to emotional stimuli may be a mechanism through which these associations occur (Morris et al., 2017). Given that parent-child relationships undergo significant transitions in early adolescence (Collins & Laursen, 2006) and that adolescents display increased neurobiological plasticity (Steinberg, 2005), it may be especially important to consider mother-child relationship quality as a predictor of neural responses to emotional stimuli during adolescence.

To this end, we assessed the unique contributions of positive and negative aspects of mother-adolescent relationship quality on adolescent amygdala reactivity and amygdala-MPFC connectivity, an indicator of emotion regulation (Tottenham & Galván, 2017), to angry emotion faces. More negative amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) connectivity is suggestive of a mature, adaptive regulatory response, whereas positive connectivity signals less effective emotion regulation (Gee et al., 2013). We hypothesized that more positive relationship quality will predict lower levels of amygdala reactivity and more negative amygdala-MPFC connectivity to angry faces, whereas negative relationship quality will predict higher amygdala reactivity and more positive amygdala-MPFC connectivity.

Eighty-four adolescents (Mage = 13.33, 32 girls) and their mothers were observed during a conflict discussion task. Observers rated mother-adolescent dyadic positive affect and maternal hostility from the conflict discussion task. Mothers reported on parent-adolescent closeness, conflict, and rejection. Observer ratings of maternal hostility and mother reports of conflict and rejection were combined to obtain a composite of mother-adolescent negativity. Sixty-six of the 84 adolescents also participated in a functional MRI scan. During the scan, adolescents completed an emotion ‘go no-go’ task where they were exposed to angry, happy, and neutral faces. Amygdala reactivity and amygdala-MPFC connectivity to angry faces (compared with neutral faces) were obtained using region of interest analyses.

Two multiple regression models were tested. Model 1 examined mother-adolescent dyadic positive affect, closeness, and negativity as predictors of adolescent amygdala reactivity to angry faces. Model 2 assessed the same predictors on adolescent amygdala-MPFC connectivity to angry faces.

Descriptive statistics and correlations are reported in Table 1 and results of regression models are reported in Table 2. Controlling for mother-adolescent closeness and negativity, mother-adolescent dyadic positive affect predicted lower levels of amygdala reactivity to angry faces. Further, after controlling for positive aspects of the mother-adolescent relationship (i.e., closeness, dyadic positive affect), mother-adolescent negativity predicted more positive amygdala-MPFC connectivity (i.e., less effective emotion regulation) to angry faces.

Adolescents who experience more positive affect with mothers may recover more quickly from negative emotional experiences (Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998) and therefore display decreased amygdala reactivity to angry stimuli. In contrast, mother-child relationships characterized by negativity may interfere with adolescents’ feelings of security or model maladaptive strategies for down-regulating emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998), which may contribute to less mature amygdala-MPFC connectivity in response to angry faces. Findings highlight the unique contributions of positive and negative aspects of mother-adolescent relationship quality on adolescent neural reactivity and regulation to angry stimuli.

Authors

• Niyantri Ravindran, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Nancy McElwain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ethan M. McCormick, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva H. Telzer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author