Poster #105 - Maternal Emotion Focused Reactions Moderates the Relation between Maternal Anxiety and Infant Sleep

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Health, Growth, Injury

Integrative Statement

Healthy sleep supports physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development (Field, 2017). As such, it is important to investigate factors that contribute to problems with sleep (Caldwell et al., 2015). Child temperament characteristics, including elevated negative affect, has been correlated with sleep disturbances (Troxel et al., 2013). Parent characteristics have also been implicated in the etiology of sleep problems. For example, maternal anxiety has been related to greater child sleep disturbances (Cadwell et al., 2015; Millette, 2014). Although previous studies have found positive parenting behaviors to be negatively associated with sleep problems (Bell et al., 2008), no studies have considered how maternal anxiety and maternal caregiving specific to their coping with children’s negative affect may affect child sleep patterns. To address these gap in the literature, the current study examined the contributions of cumulative risk, infant negative affect, maternal caregiving, maternal anxiety and maternal positive strategies of coping with their children’s negative emotions in relation to early toddler sleep difficulties. We also considered how maternal coping strategies may interact with maternal anxiety in relation to toddler sleep problems. It was anticipated that higher family cumulative risk, maternal anxiety and infant negative affect would be positively associated with toddler sleep problems. We expected maternal sensitive/warm parenting and maternal positive strategies of coping with their children’s negative emotions would be negatively associated with toddler sleep problems. Given limited existing work from which to base hypotheses, specific hypotheses regarding the interaction of maternal anxiety and maternal coping strategies in association with toddler sleep problems were not made.

A sample of 179 mother-infant dyads participated. Cumulative risk was assessed when children were 4 months of age. At 12 months postpartum, dyads engaged in a free play without the use of toys task, which was later coded for sensitive/warm caregiving. At 12 months, mothers completed the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI;Beck et al.,1988) to assess anxiety, and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R; Rothbart et al., 1998) to assess child negative affect. At 18 months , mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1966) to assess for child sleep problems, and the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 1990) to assess for parenting strategies when addressing children’s negative emotions.

Missing data was estimated using multiple imputation. Subsequently, a hierarchical regression analysis was completed with 18 month child sleep problems as the dependent variable (See Table 1). Only cumulative risk, maternal anxiety, and maternal expressive encouragement emerged as direct predictors of child sleep problems; however a trend-level interaction (p<0.10) between maternal anxiety and maternal emotion focused reactions was observed. Simple slopes analyses revealed that high levels of maternal anxiety coupled with high levels of supportive emotion focused reactions was positively associated with sleep problems (See Figure 1). These findings may implicate an exposure effect whereby mothers with high anxiety focus on children’s emotions may use more emotion focused reactions that exhibit an anxious quality, exposing their child to more anxiety, which contributes to child sleep difficulties. Further conclusions and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Amber M Chamberlain, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Leanna Rosinski, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kimberly Ezzo, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marissa M Dawson, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Quirarte, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel Burks, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• David Bridgett, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author