Poster #54 - How Well do Mothers and Children Perceive Each Other’s Internalizing Symptoms?

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Research has shown that when mothers’ and children’s perceptions of individual and family processes match, children demonstrate more positive outcomes (De Los Reyes et al., 2013; Ohannessian et al., 2016; Steinberg, 2001). In contrast, Stein and colleagues (2018) found that discrepancies between parents and their child’s perception of child internalizing symptoms were related to adverse child outcomes. The process of accurately inferring another person’s feelings is referred to as empathic accuracy (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001). Although mothers frequently report on their child’s emotional well-being in research studies, tests of their empathic accuracy in ratings of their child’s feelings are limited. Furthermore, less is known about children’s view of their mother’s internalizing symptoms, with the literature largely considering the qualitative meaning children make of parent psychopathology (Simpson-Adkins & Daiches, 2018; Yamamoto & Keogh, 2017). Given the frequency of the intergenerational transmission of depression (Lieb et al., 2002), it is important to understand how one’s own experience of internalizing symptoms may bias the perception of another’s symptoms within families. The perception bias of using your own feelings to infer how another person feels is known as assumed similarity bias (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001). The present study tested mothers’ and children’s empathic accuracy and assumed similarity in their perceptions of each other’s internalizing symptoms using an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM). We hypothesized that mothers and children would show significant empathic accuracy and assumed similarity. We also tested child sex and age as moderators of mothers’ and children’s perceptions. Participants were 130 mother-child dyads (child M age = 13.63, SD = 2.20, 46.9% male) drawn from two studies on children’s development. Mothers reported on their symptoms on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and on their child’s internalizing symptoms on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Children completed the SDQ about themselves, and reported on their mother’s symptoms on the Child Report of Other’s Depression-Mother Version (CROD-M). The 12 CROD-M items about the severity and chronicity of mother’s depression were summed. Descriptive statistics and correlations are in Table 1. Results indicated that mothers were both empathically accurate, b = 0.49, SE = 0.08, p < 0.001, and assumed similarity, b = 0.14, SE = 0.04, p = 0.001, when rating their child’s internalizing symptoms (Figure 1). For children, however, only the assumed similarity pathway was significant, b = 0.37, SE = 0.10, p < 0.001, suggesting that children rely on their own symptoms to infer how their mother is feeling. Follow-up analyses showed no significant differences between boys and girls; however, there was significant moderation by child age, suggesting that children’s empathic accuracy was significant only for younger children, b = -0.07, SE = 0.02, p = 0.003. One potential explanation is that older children may rely on their history of experience with their mother, thereby impairing their empathic accuracy of their mother’s current symptoms. Further consideration of the processes accounting for empathic accuracy and assumed similarity perceptions, and the impact of these perceptions on family functioning, should be explored in future research.

Authors

• Chelsea Carson, Southern Methodist University
  Presenting Author

• Page Hurley, Southern Methodist University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emma Coleman, Southern Methodist University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Naomi Ekas, Texas Christian University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chrystyna Kouros, Southern Methodist University
  Non-Presenting Author