Poster #20 - Effortful Control During the Puzzle Box Task in Maltreated and Nonmaltreated Youth

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Introduction: Effortful control (EC), defined as “the efficiency of executive attention, including the ability to inhibit a dominant response and/or to activate a subdominant response, to plan, and to detect errors,” is integral to healthy social and psychological development (Rothbart & Bates, 2006, p. 129). However, research has shown that child maltreatment is associated with lower levels of EC, resulting in difficulties with emotion and behavior regulation (Goldsmith et al., 1997; Eisenberg et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important to consider interventions that might mitigate the effects of maltreatment on children’s developing EC. The current study seeks to investigate the impact of Reminiscing and Emotion Training (Valentino et al., 2019), a brief relational intervention that targeted sensitive and emotionally supportive parenting behavior among mothers of 3- to 6-year-olds with histories of maltreatment perpetration, on effortful control. Because previous research has shown that RET has been associated with improvements in child emotion regulation, it in turn may be related to improvements in EC (Speidel et al., 2019). The study measures EC as cheating behavior during the puzzle box task (Eisenberg et al., 2004) , five years post-intervention in three groups: a maltreated group who participated in RET, a maltreated group who did not, and a nonmaltreated control group. I hypothesized (1) maltreated children would have more EC difficulties (cheating during the puzzle box task) than nonmaltreated children, and (2) maltreated youth who received the intervention would have better EC relative to maltreated youth who did not receive the intervention. Method: Participants included a sample of 33 maltreated RET participants, 38 maltreated control participants, and 54 nonmaltreated youth using data drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study following mothers and children who participated in a randomized clinical trial of the RET intervention. Youth (M = 10.38 years, SD = 1.33) completed the hidden puzzle task. Children were shown a complex puzzle placed in a clear box with a cloth over it and were instructed to complete the puzzle in 5 minutes without looking. Video-recordings of the task were coded for both the number of times children cheated as well as the proportion of the task that children spent cheating. ANOVAs were conducted to analyze group differences in both cheating measurements. Results: There were no significant differences between the maltreated-intervention, maltreated-non-intervention, and non-maltreated groups in either the number of times children cheated (F(2, 121) = .08, p = .98) or proportion of time spent cheating (F(2, 121) = .33, p = .72). However, older children cheated less frequently (p = 0.006) and spent less time cheating (p = 0.32) than younger children.

Authors

• Emma Caroline Bartley, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Katherine Edler, University of Notre Dame

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame