Poster #62 - Growth in Early Childhood Parent-Child Relationship Quality in Relation to Preschool-Age Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Decades of research on children’s development have demonstrated the importance of the parent-child relationship during early childhood in building the foundations for children’s socioemotional adjustment (Linder et al., 2013). Parent and child contributions on children’s later functioning have historically been assessed independently of one another despite evidence that parent-child interactions are reciprocally influenced and that this bidirectionality is not fully accounted for by examining contributions from individual members of the dyad separately (Moore et al., 2014). Studies of dyadic interaction in early childhood illustrate that dyads characterized by greater mutuality, positive synchrony, and higher levels of joint attention are associated with higher levels of child self-regulation, including lower internalizing and externalizing problems (Deater-Deckard, 2004). However, these studies typically examine dyadic dimensions at single timepoints, failing to recognize the ways in which qualities of the parent-child relationship may evolve and the implications that dyadic patterns of change may have on children’s emerging problem behavior (Baumrind, 1978).

To advance our understanding of the growth in dyadic parent-child dimensions and their relation to later child psychosocial outcomes, the present study seeks to examine whether initial levels and longitudinal growth in characteristics of the parent-child dyad across early childhood uniquely predict child’s internalizing and externalizing problems at 48 months among a sample of racially and ethnically diverse, low-income families. Participants were mothers and infants (N = 403 dyads; 44.5% Black, 43.5% Latinx) on public insurance recruited from hospitals in Pittsburgh and New York City shortly following childbirth. At 6, 18, and 24 months, dyads participated in video-recorded mother-child interaction tasks that were coded for dyadic joint attention, affective mutuality, and mutual enjoyment on a 7-point Likert-like scale. At 48 months, mothers rated children’s internalizing and externalizing problems via the Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL, Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000).

Preliminary analyses (see Table 1) examining correlations at individual assessment points and later CBCL factors revealed that mutual enjoyment assessed at 18 months was significantly correlated with age 4 externalizing, [r(260)= -0.13, p=0.30] as it was assessed at 24 months [r(261)= -0.12, p=.049]. Whereas joint attention and mutual affectivity were not linked to externalizing, joint attention was significantly associated with 48 month internalizing problems at all three timepoints [6 months: r(290)= -0.16, p=.008; 18 months: r(260)= -0.16, p=.010; 24 months: r(261)= -0.18, p=.004]. Affective mutuality also was associated with internalizing problems when assessed at 18 [r(260)= -0.16, p=.010] and 24 months [r(261)= -0.16, p=.008], but mutual enjoyment was not related to internalizing problems. Future analyses will use growth modeling (i.e., SEM) to explore whether individual growth in dyadic characteristics independently predict pre-school children’s externalizing and internalizing problems after accounting for initial levels at 6 months. These results will provide important insight into the implications of growth patterns of qualities of the parent-child relationship across early childhood in relation to children’s adjustment and how moderately correlated dimensions of the parent-child relationship show diverging patterns of associations with related indices of child problem behavior.

Authors

• Julia A. Gajewski-Nemes, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Pamela Morris-Perez, New York University

• Alan L Mendelsohn, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

• Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh