Poster #137 - Improvements in Parent’s Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia following Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Child Welfare Families

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Child maltreatment (CM) is a serious public health problem in the U.S., and parents are implicated in more than 80% of cases involving physical abuse/neglect (U.S. DHHS, 2012). Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is a promising evidence-based intervention for child welfare families that interrupts harsh parenting, lowers CM recidivism rates (2.5 years post-treatment re-abuse rates of 19% vs. 49% for controls), and improves child functioning, with large effect sizes (Chaffin et al., 2004, 2011). That CM parents display higher levels of harsh, aversive parenting compared to non-maltreating parents is widely understood (Cicchetti & Toth, 2005), and recent work implicates a mechanistic pathway through which dynamic changes in mother’s parasympathetic-linked cardiac reactivity (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) drive real-time increases in harsh parenting (Skowron et al., 2013). Some research suggests that biobehavioral indices of self-regulation may be amenable to intervention in adults (Berkman et al., 2014), but no studies to date have reported whether PCIT is capable of strengthening psychophysiological markers of regulation in CM parents.

In this presentation, we report findings from our clinical trial of PCIT with child-welfare involved families with children ages 3-7 years. Data from 81 participating parents (91% moms) were analyzed for this proposal. Biobehavioral assessments at pre-, mid-, and post-intervention included autonomic (RSA) and survey (Brief Rating Scale of Executive Function; BRIEF) measures of parent regulation and parent attributions of their child (Parent Attribution Test; PAT; Bugental et al., 1998). Parent and child RSA data were collected at each wave during a 5’ resting baseline and a 15’ Social Engagement Task (Wismer Fries et al., 2008), and parenting behaviors were coded via the DPICS-IV.

Controlling for pre-intervention scores, we observed marginal group differences across conditions in parents’ psychophysiological function. As shown in Figures 1a/b, compared to controls, parents who received PCIT also demonstrated greater parasympathetic activation during the Social Engagement Task with child, F(1, 30) = 3.53, p = .070 and resting baseline (p = .212) at post-intervention, compared to parents in the control group condition. Parents’ BRIEF emotion and behavioral regulation scores differences, observations of parenting, and intervention X child sex differences in parents’ attributions also will be reported. Data collection is ongoing and we anticipate analyzing data for N = 130 parents by March, 2019.

This is the first study to our knowledge to test PCIT effects on parasympathetic-linked cardiac activity and reactivity in child welfare-involved parents. These preliminary results appear promising and suggest there is plasticity in peripheral biomarkers of parent emotion and behavior regulation and parents’ negative attributions, in addition to actual parenting behaviors in the responses of high-risk parents to PCIT.

Authors

• Elizabeth A. Skowron, University of Oregon
  Presenting Author

• Akhila Nekkanti, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen Anne Johnson, Univeristy of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emma Lyons, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Felicia Gutierrez, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• David DeGarmo, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author