Intergenerational Transmission of Biobehavioral Regulatory Skills

• In Event: 3-203 - Development of Self-Regulation in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Integrative Statement

Emergent research has suggested that elements of parental biobehavioral regulation are related to the intergenerational transmission and development of child regulatory skills. In particular, a series of different caregiver regulatory capacities has been associated as stress hormone levels such as cortisol (e.g., Blair et al, 2011; Blair et al., 2013; Bridgett et al, 2015) and higher order cognitive skills such as EF (e.g., Cuevas et al., 2014). Multiple mechanisms for the relations between maternal regulatory characteristics and child EF have been cited, though additional research is needed. Moreover, prior research has failed to consider the regulatory skills of another important caregiver in two-parent households: The father. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the intergenerational transmission of EF from mothers and fathers to their child via mechanisms of parental biobehavioral regulation.

Data come from the New Fathers and Mothers Study, which recruited first-time parents (N=436 couples) during their third trimester of pregnancy from three sites (196 from Cambridge, UK; 120 from New York, USA, and 120 from the Netherlands). Most parents in each site were highly educated and affluent and retention rates were very high: Across the sites, 97% of eligible families completed at least two of four home visits. During the last month of pregnancy, mothers and fathers completed diurnal salivary cortisol collection at home on two consecutive days. At child age 14 months (M = 14.42 months, SD = 0.57), parents collected diurnal salivary cortisol from their child, and both parents completed a series of observed semi-structured interaction tasks with their infants, as well as a battery of computer-based EF tasks assessing working memory, conflict inhibition, and shifting. At 24 months (M = 24.47 months, SD = 0.79), children completed a battery of EF tasks with a trained research assistant described elsewhere in this symposium (“Individual Differences in Executive Function from 14 to 24 Months: Longitudinal Stability and Associations with Language and Temperament”).

The three child EF measures were simultaneously regressed on prenatal parent cortisol awakening response (Table 1). Over and above covariates, maternal cortisol was uniquely positively related to child working memory (b = 0.193, p = .005) and conflict inhibition (b = 0.120, p < .001) similarly, paternal cortisol was positively related to child shifting (b = 0.096, p = .010) and conflict inhibition (b = 0.208, p = .006). We then tested indirect effects of parent cortisol on child EF via parental sensitivity and parental EF. There was no indirect effect between parent cortisol and child EF through sensitivity. However, both parents’ cortisol was related to child shifting through each parents’ own shifting abilities (p’s < .10).Maternal cortisol was related to child conflict inhibition via shifting (p = .02). Finally, child cortisol awakening response partially mediated the relation between maternal cortisol and child working memory (p = .058). These findings have implications for the intergenerational transmission of EF by identifying potential mechanisms of the relation between parental biobehavioral regulation and child EF.

Group Authors

The New Fathers and Mothers Study

Authors

• Andrew Ribner, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Stephen H. Braren, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clancy Blair, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author