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Maternal and Child Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms in Armed-Conflict Zones: The Role of Maternal Working Memory

Sat, March 25, 10:00 to 11:30am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Meeting Room 151 G

Abstract

Introduction. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prolonged stress and anxiety response following an exposure to a traumatic event (APA, 2013). In families, child post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) have been linked with parental PTSS (Lambert et al., 2014), and past research implicates parenting behaviors as one of the main mechanisms in this association (Morris et al., 2020). Given its role in promoting adaptive caregiving behaviors (Bridgett et al., 2015; Crandall et al., 2015), parental self-regulation could buffer the link between parent and child PTSS. Specifically, working memory updating (hereafter, ‘updating’), the ability to monitor and encode relevant information into working memory (Friedman & Miyake, 2017), has been associated with a host of adaptive parenting behaviors (e.g., Chico et al., 2014; Deater-Deckard et al., 2012; Gonzalez et al., 2012; Obradović et al., 2017) and lower rates of PTSD (Aupperle et al., 2012). The aim of this study was to examine the link between parent and child PTSS and to identify the role of maternal updating and exposure level to armed conflict, in this link.
Hypotheses. We hypothesize that: 1) maternal and child PTSS would be positively correlated, and 2) exposure level and maternal updating would moderate this association.
Participants. 131 mothers in their second pregnancy (Mpregnancy week = 28, range = 17-38) and their firstborn children (Mage = 24.66 months, range = 10-45, 52% boys) participated. Families resided in the Southern District of Israel, and experienced varying degrees of exposure to prolonged armed conflict.
Methods. Mothers reported on their own and their child's PTSS by completing the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian Version (Weathers et al., 1994), and the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (Foa et al., 2001), respectively. To assess updating, mothers completed the 2-back task (Owen et al., 2005). Exposure level was measured as the mean of each family’s town’s distance from the Gaza strip and the number of missile alert sirens in their town during the study period.
Results. Mothers’ and children’s PTSS levels were significantly correlated (r = .54, p < .001). A hierarchical regression analysis predicting child PTSS (Table 1) revealed a significant three-way interaction between maternal PTSS, maternal updating, and exposure level. Simple-slopes analyses (Figure 1) indicated that when mothers exhibited low updating performance, the association between maternal and child PTSS was moderated by exposure level, such that mothers’ and children’s symptoms were more strongly related under higher levels of exposure (left panel). However, among families with moderate and high levels of maternal updating (middle and right panels), the association between maternal and child PTSS did not vary at levels of exposure.
Conclusions. Results indicate that maternal updating may act as a resilience factor, buffering against the impact of repeated exposure to traumatic events on the link between mother and child PTSS. Updating abilities may assist mothers in fostering a safe environment during and after exposure. Future studies are needed to further understand the potential mechanisms; nonetheless, these findings highlight the importance of parental regulation under repeated exposure to threat. Clinical implications will be discussed.
 

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