Poster #56 - Child Dysregulation Representations in the Context of Early Maltreatment: Implications for Child Regulation and Psychopathology

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Past work has identified the role of child self-regulation in explaining some of the association between early maltreatment and child psychopathology, including internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Kim-Spoon et al., 2013; Kim & Cicchetti, 2012). However, less work has examined processes that might influence maltreated children’s difficulties in self-regulation. Theory suggests that multiple factors contribute to child acquisition of self-regulatory strategies, including early attachment relationships, and observation and modeling of observed behaviors, especially in the family context (Morris et al., 2007). These early interactions and observations may inform children’s developing representations of appropriate strategies for self-regulation, which in turn, may pose implications for their own self-regulation (Zimmerman, 1999). Although evidence from typically-developing populations suggests that children’s understanding of self-regulation strategies informs their actual self-regulation (Cole et al., 2009), this link remains relatively unexamined in at-risk contexts. The current study examined relations between early maltreatment and child psychopathology using serial multiple mediation to evaluate the indirect effects of maltreatment on child internalizing and externalizing behaviors, through child representations of behavioral dysregulation, and in turn child self-regulation (i.e. emotion regulation and lability/negativity).
Participants included 164 low-income maltreated and 84 demographically-matched nonmaltreated children (ages 3 to 6) and their mothers. Children participated in a revised version of the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB; Bretherton et al., 1990; Cummings et al., 2001), a task designed to elicit children’s internal working models through seven story stems involving family interactions containing a range of elements of conflict. Children were instructed to complete each narrative using small dolls and props after a standardized beginning was presented by the experimenter. In each stem, internal representations of behavioral dysregulation were rated on a scale of 0 to 3 with higher scores reflecting higher instances of behavioral dysregulation (e.g. frustration, physical and verbal aggression, etc.) in the child’s narrative (Cummings et al., 2004). Scores were summed across the seven story stems. Interrater reliability was assessed using 20% of the videos (ICC=.75). Mothers reported on child self-regulation and psychopathology.
Results indicated that maltreated children portrayed significantly higher behavioral dysregulation during their narratives than nonmaltreated children (b=.20, SE=.06, p<. 01). Behavioral dysregulation was associated with higher child lability/negativity (b=.15, SE=.06, p<.05), and higher child lability/negativity was associated with more internalizing (b=.50, SE=.05, p<.001) and externalizing behaviors (b=.76, SE=.03, p<.001). The bias-corrected bootstrap method using 1,000 resamples was employed to construct 95% confidence intervals around the indirect effects (MacKinnon et al., 2004). When testing serial multiple mediation, the indirect effects of maltreatment on child internalizing (95% CI: .002, .035) and externalizing behaviors (95% CI: .003, .053) were significant through both child representations of behavioral dysregulation and child lability/negativity, but not emotion regulation. The findings highlight the importance of early internal working models of self-regulation as a mechanism through which early risk relates to child self-regulation and in turn psychopathology. Implications and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Ruth Speidel, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author

• Monica Lawson, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• E. Mark Cummings, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame
  Non-Presenting Author