Poster #133 - Indirect Association of Parent Depression With Child Emotion Lability Through Child Cognitive Flexibility.

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Research has established that parental depression has a deleterious effect on children’s emotion regulation (Urizar & Munoz, 2021; Wu et al., 2019). However, the mechanisms through which parental depression affects children’s emotions are still unclear. Previous theoretical and empirical literature suggests that children’s cognitive flexibility may be one such mechanism, although no prior research has directly tested this. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to effectively adapt to changing environmental demands (Deák, 2003). Thus, a cognitively flexible child is able to better reappraise situations and is less likely to ruminate on negative thoughts (Joormann & Quinn, 2014; McRae et al., 2012). The chronic stress that children can experience due to parental depression may impact the development of their prefrontal cortex, reducing their cognitive flexibility and emotion regulation abilities (Wellman, 2001). We thus did a preliminary investigation using cross-sectional data of whether child cognitive flexibility mediates the relationship between parental depression and children’s emotional lability. Data were collected online in 2019-2020 (N = 315). Families were from the USA (n=178), the UK (n=105), Venezuela, and Nigeria. The sample was predominantly white and non-Hispanic/Latinx. Parental depression was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire- 9 (PHQ-9; Kroenke et al., 2001). Cognitive flexibility was assessed with the flexibility index of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function–Preschool Version (Gioia et al., 2003). The emotional lability of children was measured through the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Data were analyzed using simple mediation models with PROCESS in R (Hayes, 2012). We calculated 95% bootstrapped intervals (n= 5000) to assess the indirect effect of parental depression on children’s emotional lability through cognitive flexibility. Parent age (M = 32.4 years, range 20-51) and child age (M = 3.5 years, range 2-5.5) had significant associations with children’s emotional lability, and thus they were controlled for in the analyses. The total effect of parent depression on children’s emotion lability was r = 0.31 (p < 0.000). In the mediational model, higher parental depression was associated with lesser cognitive flexibility in children (β median = 0.24, 95% CI = [0.14, 0.35]). Lower cognitive flexibility was further linked to children’s higher emotion lability (β median = 0.61, 95% CI = [0.53, 0.69]). The direct (β median = 0.17, 95% CI = [0.09, 0.25]) and indirect (β median = 0.15, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.22]) effect of parent depression on emotional lability were both significant. These results provide preliminary evidence for the mediating role of child cognitive flexibility in the relation between parent depression and child emotion lability. Since cognitive flexibility is a skill that can be increased through easily-scalable interventions (e.g., Gao et al., 2015; Ludyga et al., 2020), it might be an effective way to reduce the effect of parental depression on children. However, since this is observational, cross-sectional data, no conclusions regarding causality can be inferred. Future longitudinal studies can help understand this mechanism in better detail.

Authors

• Maitri Jain, Eastern Michigan University
  Presenting Author

• Angela D Staples, Eastern Michigan University

• Jamie Lawler, Eastern Michigan University