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Childhood Caregiving Unpredictability and Emotional Schema-based Learning and Adaptation

Thu, April 8, 3:15 to 4:15pm EDT (3:15 to 4:15pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Background: Childhood unpredictability in the home environment is a promising dimension through which to conceptualize adverse caregiving experiences (Smith & Pollak, 2020). Initial evidence suggests that unpredictable caregiving environments are linked to improved cognitive flexibility in unpredictable contexts, but poor cognitive flexibility in other contexts (Mittal et al., 2015). Other childhood adversity types are linked consistently to alterations in emotional learning (Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016). This study, therefore, examined the relationship between childhood caregiving unpredictability and emotional schema-based learning and adaptation.

Methods: This study used pilot data from 9 late adolescent undergraduates (age: M=18.78, SD=1.09 years; gender: 8F/1M; race/ethnicity: 22% Asian, 22% Hispanic/Latinx, 56% White). On day 1, participants completed the Questionnaire of Unpredictability in Childhood (Glynn et al., 2018) and a novel emotional schema acquisition task. Participants learned through trial-and-error predictions that different types of fribbles (designated by the body color of these fictional animals) were good/positive, bad/negative, and neutral based on sounds they made. On day 2, participants returned to complete an emotional schema-based learning task that assessed participant’s ability to adapt their preexisting emotional schema learned on day 1 when confronted with new conflicting affective information. As with day 1, participants were asked to predict what noise (negative, positive, neutral) each fribble would make. Most fribble-noise pairs (n=150; 63%) were congruent with the emotional schema (d1-d2 valence: neg-neg, pos-pos, neu-neu). However, 37% of the fribble-noise pairs (n=90) were incongruent with the emotional schema (d1-d2 valence: neg-pos, neg-neu, pos-neg, pos-neu, neu-neg, neu-pos), requiring schema adaptation based on other fribble features (face/tail). Accuracy assessed emotional schema adaptation ability.

Preliminary Results: This pilot study characterized the magnitude of the relationship between childhood caregiving unpredictability and accuracy across d1-d2 valence categories (Figure 1). For all congruent stimuli, greater childhood caregiving unpredictability was associated with higher accuracy (neg-neg: r = .34; neu-neu: r = .49; pos-pos: r = .49). In all incongruent conditions in which the fribble valence shifted to being more negative, greater childhood caregiving unpredictability was associated with lower accuracy (pos-neg: r = -.20; pos-neu: r = -.16; neu-neg: r = -.19). Results were inconsistent for conditions where the fribble valence changed to being more positive (neg-pos: r = .04; neu-pos: r = .11; neg-neu: r = -.15). Montecarlo simulations (N=1,000) based on a multilevel model from these data suggest that a sample size of 50 participants would have 90% power to detect a significant childhood unpredictability x d1-d2 valence interaction (Figure 2). Data collection was paused due to COVID-19 (n=54 completed) and will be completed virtually this fall. A multi-level model will be conducted with data from the full sample (N=120).

Discussion: Although preliminary, higher levels of childhood caregiving unpredictability may be associated with alterations in emotional schema-based learning that differ by the nature of affective valence shifts.
The observed inflexibility in shifting away from positive schemas may reflect an adaptation promoted by growing up in unpredictable caregiving environments (Frankenhuis & deWeerth, 2013). Future directions are to examine these relationships in a fully-powered study.

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