Poster #125 - What’s In a Measure? Emotional Connection, Mother-Infant Relationship Quality, & 3-Year Behavioral Outcomes

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Methods, History, Theory

Integrative Statement

Introduction:
Practitioners (e.g., pediatricians) recognize the importance of having knowledge of relational health and child development, including appropriate developmental observation skills (Regalado, Schneiderman, Duan, & Ragusa, 2017). Yet, current assessments of parent-child relationship quality tend to focus primarily on individual partner contributions, rather than on the dyad as a whole (Bornstein, Suwalsky, & Breakstone, 2012; Zeanah & Lieberman, 2016). Moreover, existing frameworks for assessing interaction quality may be labor-intensive and require extensive training, limiting their use in applied/clinical settings. Thus, developing valid, efficient screening tools for parent-child relational health remains paramount to identifying dyads at-risk.

The Welch Emotional Connection Screen (WECS) was developed as a rapid, brief screening tool for assessing parent-child relational health. The WECS focuses on the dyadic-level construct emotional connection (EC). EC reflects the degree to which dyads are mutually responsive, engaged, and expressive with each other. Recent evidence suggests EC assessed by the WECS is linked to positive maternal and child outcomes (Hane et al., 2018; Welch et al., 2015; 2016).

The present research sought to further validate the WECS by comparing ratings of EC to ratings of interaction quality derived from a widely used and cited coding scheme for mother-child interaction originally developed for the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (MIIRS; Owen, 2009; 2018). Two research questions guided this investigation: (1) How do WECS ratings of mother-infant EC at 6-months relate to MIIRS ratings of mother-infant interaction quality? (2) How do WECS and MIIRS ratings at 6-months contribute to the prediction of child behavior problems at age 3-years?

Informed by literature on co-regulation during infancy (e.g., Doiron & Easterbrooks, 2012), and consistent with Welch et al. (2016), we anticipated meaningful relationships between WECS and MIIRS rating scales. Moreover, given the WECS’ focus on relational health, we expected EC at age 6-months to make a significant, independent contribution to the prediction of preschoolers’ behavior problems beyond MIIRS ratings of dyadic mutuality.

Method:
Middle-class mothers and their 6-month-old full term infants (n = 41) were videotaped in their homes during face-to-face play. Subsequently, separate teams of coders independently coded the interactions using the WECS or MIIRS. When children were age 3 years, mothers reported on their preschoolers’ behavior problems using the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1988).

Results/Conclusion:
Assessment of EC when infants were 6-months of age was meaningfully related to ratings on the MIIRS (Table 1). In dyads rated EC+ (emotionally connected) on the WECS, mothers were significantly more sensitive, less intrusive, less detached, more positive, and less negative on the MIIRS. Children were also more positive, and less negative, and exhibited higher sustained attention. At the relational level, EC+ mother-infant pairs exhibited higher levels of dyadic mutuality on the MIIRS.
Focusing on the two measures’ dyadic-level ratings, regression analyses indicated that EC explained an additional 7.3-13% variance in maternal ratings of preschoolers’ behavior problems beyond MIIRS’ dyadic mutuality (Table 2).
Thus, the WECS holds promise as a valid predictive screening tool for young children at risk for adverse behavioral outcomes.

Authors

• Marcus A Fagan, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia Frosch, University of North Texas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mark A Lopez, University of North Texas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica Hutchinson, University of North Texas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amara Bradetich, University of North Texas
  Non-Presenting Author