Implications of Parents’ Child-Based Worth on the Cognitive Processing of Child-Related Information: An Experimental Investigation

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Parents’ child-based worth, which refers to the tendency for parents to hinge their feelings of worth on children’s performance, has been found to predict parents’ controlling practices and affective responses to children’s failure, albeit not success (Ng et al., 2019; Wuyts et al., 2015). However, the mechanism remains unclear and child-based worth has only been measured with self-reports (Ng et al., 2014; Wuyts et al., 2015), which are susceptible to response bias. This online study examined if parents’ child-based worth may be reflected in their cognitive processing of representations of the self and child. Prior research found that trait words referring to the self are encoded more elaborately and thus better memorized than those referring to other people or processed semantically (Symons & Johnson, 1997). We anticipated that the more parents have child-based worth, the more elaborately they would encode information, particularly negative information, about children’s performance, albeit not necessarily other aspects of children (e.g., personality).

Participants were 116 parents (mean age = 42.24 years; 72% female; 75% bachelor’s degree or higher) of fourth- to sixth-graders in Beijing, China. Parents reported on their child-based worth (Ng et al., 2014) and later completed a behavioral task designed based on prior research (e.g., Zhu & Zhang, 2002) to examine their recognition memory of materials encoded in three conditions: self, child, and semantic (see Table 1). Corrected R-response and K-response scores were used in analyses (see note on Table 2), with the former as a more sensitive measure of self-referential processing (see Table 1). ANOVA based on R-response, with Child-Based Worth (low, high; by median split) as the between-participants factor and Condition (self, child, semantic) and Type (performance, personality) as within-participants factors, yielded main effects of child-based worth and condition, and a Condition × Type interaction, Fs > 4.08, ps < .05 (see Table 2). Importantly, there was an expected Child-Based Worth × Condition interaction, F(2, 228) = 3.11, p < .05: Parents with high child-based worth were more accurate in the recognition task with adjectives in the child (vs. self) condition, whereas those with low child-based worth displayed the typical pattern of being more accurate with adjectives in the self (vs. semantic) condition. A similar ANOVA with R-response but Valence (positive, negative) replacing Type as a within-participants factor yielded the same effects, Fs > 4.84, ps < .05. There were neither Child-Based Worth × Condition × Type nor Child-Based Worth × Condition × Valence interactions, which might reflect insufficient statistical power. As expected, ANOVAs based on K-response did not yield significant results.

It appears that the more parents hinge their self-worth on children’s performance, the more elaborately they encode information about children, much like or even more so than how they encode information about themselves. As such, children’s performance, especially failure, may be particularly ego-threatening to these parents, which may contribute to greater use of control (Ng et al., 2019; Wuyts et al., 2015). Our findings also suggest that recognition memory task may be used to corroborate parents’ self-reports of child-based worth.

Authors

• Florrie Fei-Yin Ng, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Meng-Run Zhang, New York University Shanghai
  Presenting Author

• Ying-Yi Hong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ru-De Liu, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jun Wei, Tsinghua University
  Non-Presenting Author