Dynamic Self-Regulation Processes in Child-Welfare Parents and Responses to Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

• In Event: The Conflicts and Balances of Parents’ Reactivity to Caregiving Demands and Parenting: A Developmental Lens

Abstract

Child maltreatment is associated with a myriad of negative developmental outcomes, underscoring the importance of identifying at-risk families and providing preventive services. Parenting training is a central approach in maltreatment prevention, but parents who have difficulty regulating emotions and behaviors may have a harder time learning and executing appropriate parenting skills. Parents at risk for maltreatment are theorized to experience greater negative emotional arousal toward normative parenting demands, thus failing to be supportive and turning to negative behaviors. However, there is little empirical evidence on how such conflicts between internal and external demands unfold on a moment-to-moment basis, and how they predict responses to parenting training.

This study takes a psychophysiological approach to modeling the dynamic self-regulation processes in a child welfare sample of mothers and preschool-age children. Based on temporal associations between parents’ cardiac arousal (inter-beat intervals; IBI) and observed parenting behaviors, we test the hypothesis that in this at-risk sample, positive parenting behaviors would predict a momentary increase in cardiac arousal, and greater arousal would predict a subsequent decrease in positive behaviors and increase in negative behaviors. A subsample then participated in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), an evidence-based program incorporating in-vivo training to improve parenting skills. This study further examines whether parents showing the regulatory difficulties described above would be less likely to complete training and/or master parenting skills during child-directed interaction (CDI), where parents practice being supportive instead of critical or directive.

The sample included 204 parents (88% mothers, Mage = 32.29 years) and their 3- to 7-year-old children (45.1% female; Mage = 5.18 years) involved with child welfare system. Before dyads were assigned to any intervention, second-by-second estimates of parental IBI and local density of observed positive and negative parenting behaviors (coded using the DPICS system) were obtained during a child-led play task. Dyads were then randomly assigned to PCIT or service-as-usual. The completion (whether they dropped out before completing CDI training) and mastery status (whether they demonstrated mastery of skills in CDI training) were examined for 79 parents who participated in PCIT.

Results of ordinary differential equations showed that, consistent with hypothesis, parents showed a momentary increase in cardiac arousal when they adopted positive behaviors; greater arousal in turn predicted a momentary decrease in positive behaviors. Contrary to the hypothesis, parents’ negative behaviors also decreased at moments of greater arousal (parents disengaged from both positive and negative behaviors when experiencing arousal). As predicted, among parents that then participated in PCIT, those who showed self-regulatory difficulties that suppress positive behaviors were more likely to drop out early or finish the training without demonstrating mastery of parenting skills.

Findings reveal how self-regulatory difficulties unfold during parent-child interaction, such that positive parenting behaviors may be physiologically taxing for at-risk parents, leading to disengagement from the interaction. These patterns suppress positive behaviors and may contribute to less ideal engagement and outcomes in trainings focused on supportive parenting skills. This suggests that parenting-based preventions should address parents’ underlying self-regulatory difficulties to achieve better treatment engagement and produce sustainable, generalizable improvements.

Authors

• Xutong Zhang, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Lisa M. Gatzke-Kopp, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Elizabeth A. Skowron, University of Oregon