Profiles of Parenting Risk Predict Infant Temperament and Attention to Threat: An Eye-Tracking Study

• In Event: Advances in the Study of Parenting and Infant Emotional Development: Merging Modern and Traditional Measures

Abstract

Early occurring individual differences in emotional reactivity and regulation play a key role in shaping developmental trajectories. Infant negative affect is a developmentally sensitive marker for fearful temperament and later anxiety (Fox et al., 2001). Attention to threat is related to similar difficulties with social engagement (Bar-Haim et al., 2007). Parental anxiety (Morales et al., 2017), psychosocial stress (McLoyd, 1998), and attention to threat (Pollak, 2003) may serve as models of emotional responding for young children as they learn to navigate their social world. Recent research demonstrates that parent anxiety and parent attention bias to threat interact to predict parenting hassles (Finegood et al., 2017), yet it remains unclear how parenting risks contribute to children’s developing temperament and attention biases. Constructing profiles of parenting risk can provide a more nuanced representation of how early family experiences predict infants’ emotional behavior. The current study has three aims: 1) Using a latent profile analysis (LPA), we will examine whether meaningful parenting risk profiles emerge from indicators of maternal attention to threat, anxiety, and psychosocial stress, 2) we will examine whether risk profiles relate to infant temperament and attention concurrently (at 8 months) and longitudinally (at 12 months), and 3) Using a latent transition analysis (LTA), we will assess stability in risk profiles over time.

The sample included 107 mothers and infants from an ongoing longitudinal study. Infants (49 girls) were assessed at 8 months and were 64% White Non-Hispanic, 20% Hispanic, 3% Asian/Pacific Islander, 5% African American, 6% Multi-Racial, and 2% missing. Mothers completed the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck et al., 1998) to measure anxiety and the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (Matheny et al., 1995) to measure psychosocial stress. To measure infant negative affect, parents completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire—Revised (Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003). Parents and infants both completed the eye-tracking version of the dot-probe task (Pérez-Edgar et al., 2017), from which we derived total dwell time to angry faces.

First, parenting risk profiles were constructed from indices of maternal dwell time to angry faces, anxiety, and psychosocial stress (Figure 1). The three-profile solution was chosen as providing the best fit (AIC=840.29, BIC=917.80, Entropy=0.82). Mothers in Profile 1 (“lower risk”) had slightly shorter dwell times to angry faces, lower anxiety, and average psychosocial stress. Mothers in Profile 2 (“average risk”) had slightly longer dwell times to angry faces, slightly higher anxiety, and average levels of psychosocial stress. Mothers in Profile 3 (“higher risk”) had shorter dwell times to angry faces (potentially indicating a bias away), coupled with higher anxiety and psychosocial stress. Second, we correlated the probability of profile membership with infant negative affect and dwell time to angry faces at 8 months. Probability of belonging to the higher-risk profile (Profile 3) was positively related to infant negative affect (r=.20, p=.04). Probability of profile membership was not correlated with infant dwell time to angry faces. As 12-month data are processed, forthcoming analyses will include LTA to assess stability in profiles over time and stability’s relations to infant attention and temperament.

Authors

• Leigha Alexandra MacNeill, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Kelley E Gunther, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin A. Buss, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa Lobue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Koraly Elisa Perez-Edgar, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author