Inherited and Environmental Moderators of Mother-Child Behavioral Contingency and Contingent Negativity at 27 Months

• In Event: 3-109 - Understanding Processes underlying Children's Emotional Development and Emotion Regulation Using Intensive Longitudinal Approaches

Integrative Statement

Lower mother-child behavioral contingency (i.e., the degree to which one partner’s behavior, positive or negative, is contingent on the other’s prior behavior) has been linked to child behavior problems (Deater-Deckard & Petrill, 2004). However, higher contingent negativity (i.e., the degree to which one partner’s negative behavior is contingent on the other’s prior negative behavior) may also contribute to behavior problems (Patterson, 2002). Both maternal depression and heritable aspects of children’s negative affect (hNA) have been associated with lower behavioral contingency and higher contingent negativity (Goodman & Gotlib, 1999; Kochanska et al., 2004). However, most research has used non-genetically informed samples, which are unable to determine how heritable factors, such as hNA, interact with environmental factors, such as maternal depression, (GxE) to moderate behavioral contingency and contingent negativity. We used an adoption sample to examine whether adoptive mothers’ (AM) depression and adopted children’s (AC) hNA interacted to moderate behavioral contingency and contingent negativity. We predicted dyads with higher AM depression and higher AC hNA would show the lowest behavioral contingency and highest contingent negativity.

Method. Participants were AM-AC dyads (N = 551) from the Early Growth and Development Study (Leve et al., 2013 for details) that participated in a 5-minute Teaching Task at age 27-months. AM depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. AC hNA was indexed by birth mother self-report on the Adult Temperament Questionnaire. AM and AC positive (warm, supportive, engaged) and negative (intrusive, resistant, disengaged) behaviors were coded at 1-second intervals and collapsed into 3-second epochs for analysis. Multivariate multilevel models of time-synchronized mother-child behaviors modeled AM and AC behavioral contingency and contingent negativity. Models for behavioral contingency included any kind of behavior; those for contingent negativity included only negative behaviors.

Results. A significant interaction (p = .001) was found between AM depression and AC hNA for AM behavioral contingency (Figure 1). For AMs with more depressive symptoms, those with children with higher hNA showed lower behavioral contingency than AMs of children with lower hNA. A significant interaction (p = .01) was found between AM depression and AC hNA for AC contingent negativity (Figure 2). For ACs of AMs with more depressive symptoms, children with higher hNA showed lower contingent negativity than children with lower hNA.

Discussion. In line with our prediction, AMs with more depressive symptoms were less contingent to their children’s behaviors, only if their children had higher hNA, suggesting low levels of dyadic synchrony. Contrary to our prediction, there was the lowest AC contingent negativity for these dyads, which may suggest a positive function for lower synchrony in the context of maternal depression and children with higher hNA.

Alternatively, for children with lower hNA, AMs with more depressive symptoms were more contingent than AMs with fewer depressive symptoms, in a way that may have been experienced as intrusive, as these children showed high levels of contingent negativity. Our findings shed new light on the role of dyadic contingency, suggesting, in some cases, lower contingency may be beneficial and higher contingency could be problematic.

Authors

• Brandon Bray, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Ginger A Moore, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chang Liu, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Caroline K.P. Roben, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leslie D. Leve, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jody Ganiban, George Washington University
  Non-Presenting Author

• David Reiss, Yale Child Study Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Misaki N Natsuaki, University of California, Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenae Neiderhiser, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author