3-168 - Parental neurocognitive self-regulation and harsh parenting: Integrating neural, physiological, and behavioral levels of analysis

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Harsh parenting includes negative emotional/affective, cognitive, and behavioral features (e.g., reactive anger, hostility) that together represent a major risk factor for child and adolescent maladjustment. Contemporary theory emphasizes central roles for parental cognitive/affective reactivity and deficits in self-regulation, across systems and levels of the nervous system and behavior (e.g., central and peripheral nervous systems, cognition/emotion/behavior). The current symposium presents four distinct approaches to examining transactions between levels/systems of maternal reactivity and self-regulation, using various behavioral and physiological measures: self-report questionnaire, executive function and emotion regulation task behavior, electroencephalography, electrocardiophary, sleep actigraphy, and fMRI. The first paper reports results from an fMRI study of mothers of infants, showing that greater down-regulation of negative emotionality in prefrontal cortex is linked with effective anger-regulation toward the child. The second paper examines mothers of toddlers and maternal sleep quality, reporting distinct associations between maternal executive function deficits and harsher parenting for those with poor versus high quality sleep. The third paper presents findings from an EEG/ECG study of mothers of 6-13 yr olds, showing that negative affectivity and harsh parenting are most strongly linked for those with poor executive function and strong physiological reactivity. The fourth paper reports results from an ECG study of parents of adolescents, finding that the harshest parenting was observed for parents with the combination of poorer executive function and lower heart rate variability. Together, these findings indicate that integrating information from multiple levels of analysis is critical to our understanding of individual differences in harsh parenting.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chairs

• Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

• Melissa Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester

Individual Presentations

• Neural regulation of negative emotions and maternal hostility among first-time mothers - Presenting Author: Christian G. Capistrano, University of Denver; Andrew J Erhart, University of Denver; Pilyoung Kim, University of Denver

• Maternal Executive Function and Sleep Interact in the Prediction of Dysfunctional Parenting - Presenting Author: Mamatha Chary, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Maureen Elizabeth McQuillan, Indiana University Bloomington; John E. Bates, Indiana University; Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

• Maternal negative emotionality and harsh parenting: Moderating effects of neurocognitive processes - Presenting Author: Mengjiao Li, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA; Martha Ann Bell, Virginia Tech

• Keeping Calm and Not Carrying On: The Regulatory Roles of Parent’s HRV and Executive Functions on Discipline During Adolescence - Presenting Author: Melissa Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester; Hannah R. Jones, University of Rochester; Meredith Martin, University of Rochester; Patrick T Davies, University of Rochester