Dispositional and Parental Empathy are Differentially Associated with Mothers’ Brain Activation and Toddlers’ Social Behavior

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Background: Caregivers’ empathy likely plays an important role in children’s social development; however, it is unclear whether variation in children’s social engagement behavior is better explained by parents’ dispositional (“other-directed”) or parental (“child-directed”) empathy. Further, although both the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula have consistently been implicated in empathic processes, we do not know whether these two brain regions are associated with individual differences in both dispositional and parental empathy.

Methods: We recruited 124 mother–infant dyads (50.0% female infants; 63.71% White) at infant age 6 months (mean=6.14±0.43 months). Mothers completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to assess their own dispositional empathy (Davis, 1983) and the Parental Empathy Measure (PEM) to assess their empathy toward their infant (Stern et al., 2015), and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire to assess infant temperament (Putnam et al., 2013). A subset of mothers (N=20) also participated in an fMRI task involving passive viewing of film clips intended to elicit empathy for characters experiencing emotional distress (i.e., “mentalizing scenes”; Jacoby et al., 2016). We focused our analyses on bilateral ACC (BA 24,32) and insula (BA 13) activation during mentalizing scenes (mentalizing>control) given that these regions have been implicated in empathic processes (Lockwood, 2016). When their children were age 18 months (mean age=18.24±0.48 months), mothers completed the Infant–Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA) to assess children’s socioemotional functioning (Carter et al., 2003). We focused on the social relatedness subscale of the ITSEA, which measures the tendency to show normative behaviors indicating interest in and responsiveness to others. Ten percent of children met the clinical concern cutoff on this subscale.

Results: Mothers’ total dispositional empathy (sum of perspective-taking and empathic concern IRI subscales) at infant age 6 months was not significantly associated with child social behavior at 18 months (β=0.17 [-0.01, 0.34], t(122)=1.86, p=.066, R2=.02). In contrast, mothers who reported greater total parental empathy (sum of affective and cognitive PEM subscales) at infant age 6 months reported at age 18 months that their children demonstrated higher levels of social relatedness (β=0.29 [0.12, 0.47], t(121)=3.38, p=.001, R2=.08), an association that held when covarying child temperament during infancy. Neither dispositional nor parental empathy were associated with bilateral ACC or insula activation during mentalizing scenes. Posthoc analyses examining IRI and PEM subscales indicated that mothers who reported greater dispositional cognitive empathy (perspective-taking) had greater increases in activation in the ACC (β=0.48 0.04, 0.91], t(18)=2.30, p=.034, R2=.18) and insula (β=0.45[<0.01, 0.89], t(18)=2.12, p=.048, R2=.16). In contrast, mothers who reported greater parental affective empathy had greater increases in activation only in the insula (β=0.51 [0.09, 0.94], t(18)=2.54, p=.021, R2=.22).

Conclusions: Mothers’ empathy toward their infants may play a more important role in children’s subsequent social development than does mothers’ dispositional empathy. Our findings suggest that mothers’ dispositional cognitive empathy and parental affective empathy are linked to activation in their salience processing regions when they engage with others’ negative emotions. Future research might examine the shared and unique neural correlates of dispositional and parental empathy in relation to children’s early social development.

Authors

• Amar Ojha, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Jonas G. Miller, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lucy Sobey King, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elena Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn Humphreys, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ian Gotlib, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author