Poster #2 - Longitudinal Pathways of Parenting Stress on Executive Function: Double-mediation of Parent-Child Interaction and Media-Device Addiction

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Executive function refers to multiple neurocognitive processes, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. EF is important for school-age children as it supports school adaptation, academic achievement, and an individual's later adaptive life (Moriguchi et al., 2016; Lee & Han, 2020; Sung & Wickrama, 2018). Parents have a significant influence on children’s EF. Especially, parenting stress and parental interaction with young children are known to affect children’s EF (De Cock et al., 2017; Spruijt et al., 2020). Recently, parent-child interaction is related to children’s media-device use (Detnakarintra et al., 2020), and media addiction has been investigated as a variable negatively affecting EF. Since young children’s EF develops over a long period, this study assumed that parenting stress in early childhood has a relation to later EF. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the longitudinal pathways from parenting stress at age 4 to EF difficulty at age 10 and examine the sequential mediation effects of parent-child interaction at age 6 and media-device addiction at age 9.
In this study, secondary data (N = 1,188) from the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) were used. It is longitudinal research started in 2008 and is annually updated by the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education. We used data on parenting stress from wave 5 (2012), parent-child interaction from wave 7 (2014), media-device addition from wave 10 (2017), and EF difficulty from wave 11 (2018).
Descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, and Cronbach’s alphas were estimated using SPSS 27. Using the Process Macro developed by Hayes (2012), the double-mediation model was tested at CI .95 with the bootstrapped sample 10000.
Both longitudinal direct and indirect effects were identified (Table 1 & Figure 1). Parental parenting stress at children age 4 is negatively linked to parent-child interaction at age 6, and positively related to media-device addiction at age 9 and EF difficulty at age 10. Parent-child interaction at age 6 is negatively related to children’s media-device addiction at age 9 and EF difficulty at age 10. The media-device addiction positively predicted EF difficulty at age 10. The total effect was 0.106 which was significant because there was no 0 between the LLCI and ULCI(CI=.0783~.1340). The simple mediating effects from parenting stress to EF difficulty via parent-child interaction(CI=.0015~.0140) and from parenting stress to EF difficulty through media-device addiction(CI=.0146~.0339) were valid. Furthermore, the sequential double-mediating effect was also significant(CI=.0022~.0068).
This study highlights the importance of parents’ roles in early childhood which influence executive function difficulty in childhood. This study confirms that both media-device addiction and EF difficulty which are receiving great social attention have a significant longitudinal relationship with parenting stress. Our results emphasize the finding that positive parent-child interactions are necessary for mediating EF difficulty.

Authors

• Jiwon Hwang, Sungkyunkwan University
  Presenting Author

• Jihyun Park, Sungkyunkwan University

• Jihyun Sung, Sungkyunkwan University