Poster #71 - Exploring Bidirectional Relations Between Parental Discipline and Children’s Inhibitory Control Across the Transition to Middle Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

Parental discipline is linked to children’s inhibitory control (IC), the ability to carry out subdominant responses in favor of prepotent or automatic responses, during the transition from early to middle childhood (ages 4 to 7). While this association is often interpreted in terms of parental influence, it may not be unidirectional. Children with more behavior problems are more likely to elicit harsh discipline from their parents and less likely to elicit inductive discipline which exacerbates their behavior problems. Whether these findings extend to IC, an important predictor of behavior problems, is unknown. Further, the frequency of parental behaviors and their impact changes in relation to children’s developmental stage. This study examined bidirectional relations between parents’ harsh and inductive discipline and 4- to 7-year-olds’ IC across two timepoints, a year apart, and child age as a moderator of these relations.

Participants were 136 4- to 6-year-olds and their primary caregiver (4-year-olds: n = 46; 5-year-olds: n = 36; 6-year-olds: n = 54; 70 girls, 66 boys; Mage = 5 years, 5.59 months; SD = 10.26 months) drawn from the Longitudinal Executive Function Study, a cohort-sequential study of executive function development during the transition to middle childhood. At two timepoints, one year apart, children completed a battery of IC tasks and parents completed a questionnaire assessing their discipline strategies.

Confirmatory factor analyses supported a one-factor model of IC and a two-factor model of harsh and inductive discipline. Both models had longitudinal measurement invariance. A latent change score model was used to examine child age as a moderator of bidirectional relations between parental discipline and child IC. Parent’s ethnicity, education, and financial stress; and child sex were included as covariates in all analyses.

The final model is presented in Figure 1. Neither harsh nor inductive discipline at time 1 (T1) predicted change in IC and IC at T1 did not predict change in either discipline measure. Child age moderated the effect of inductive discipline at T1 on change in harsh discipline. Increased inductive discipline at T1 was related to the steepest decline in harsh discipline for parents of 6-year-olds (b = -.26, p < .01), followed by parents of 5-year-olds (b = -.14, p < .01), and was unrelated to harsh discipline for parents of 4-year-olds (b = -.01, p = .95) (Figure 2).

This study examined child age as a moderator of bidirectional relations between parental discipline and child IC across the transition to middle childhood. Predicted bidirectional effects were not supported. Compared to findings from early childhood, IC and parental discipline were highly stable in this study suggesting evidence for bidirectional relations in early childhood, when EF development is most rapid, may not generalize to this older age group. Increased inductive discipline at T1 predicted a decline in harsh discipline for parents of 5- and 6-year-olds. This finding is consistent with expectations for normative change in parents’ discipline strategies during middle childhood. Further research examining when parents of 4-year-olds make this transition will inform research of normative trajectories of parental discipline.

Authors

• Daphne Vrantsidis, University of Calgary (U of C)
  Presenting Author

• Naaila Ali

• Mahsa Khoei

• Sandra Anne Wiebe, University of Alberta