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Caregiver Child Communication Following Child Maltreatment: A Dynamic Systems Approach

Sat, March 25, 11:45am to 1:15pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 2, Meeting Room 255 F

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Child maltreatment (CM) is a significant public health concern that affects one million children annually, exerts a societal cost of $2 trillion, and increases the risk for adverse health outcomes (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2021; Gilbert et al., 2009; Peterson et al., 2018). Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) is one potential pathway through which CM leads to a range of sustained adverse health outcomes (Weissman et al., 2019). Thus, empirical efforts to identify factors affecting ER, positively or negatively, have potential to inform intervention strategies for victims of CM. The Caregiver-Child (C-C) relationship is critical to the development of ER (Eisenberg et al., 1998), but has not been thoroughly examined as a potential mediator of the CM-ER relation in the CM population. Furthermore, no studies have used observational methodology to link dynamic, moment-to-moment C-C communication processes with ER in older children following CM.

OBJECTIVE: The paper presentation will provide a conceptual overview and preliminary results from a recently funded (August 2022) F31 application objectively coding caregiver validating and invalidating behaviors (VIVBS) and child affect, a proximal target of caregiver VIVBS that may be linked to long-term ER, in brief time intervals as a method for capturing moment-to-moment C-C communication dynamics; specifically, the conditional relations within and between VIVBs and child affective expressions. Simultaneous coding of caregiver VIVBs and child affect during repeated interactions will capture: 1) intra-individual variability in VIVBs and child affect over the course of conversation, and 2) how caregivers and children exert bidirectional, reciprocal influence on one another. Ultimately, these associations will elucidate how C-C dynamics promote or stymie the subsequent development of ER for children following CM.

STUDY POPULATION: The F31 leverages existing observational and questionnaire data from children and caregivers thus far enrolled in The Child Health Study (CHS; N = 439), a large, multi-wave, prospective NIH-funded cohort study of child maltreatment and subsequent adverse pediatric health. The CHS enrolls children between ages 8-13, along with a custodial caregiver, within one year of an investigation for child maltreatment, and follows them every 2 years throughout adolescence.

METHODS: CHS families complete an observational task where caregiver VIVBs and child affect expressions will be continuously quantified in 30-second epochs across three different C-C interactions focusing on relationship-enhancing and problem-solving topics. Caregiver VIVBs will be coded with the Validating and Invalidating Behavior Coding Scale (VIBCS; Fruzzetti, 2001). Coding of VIVBs is currently ongoing with a team of reliable coders, and child affect expressions will be subsequently coded. The CHS also employs repeated measurement of ER via the Emotion Regulation Checklist for Children and Adolescents (ERICA; MacDermott et al., 2010) and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1998), and CM is characterized through blinded, independent ratings of Child Protective Services records with the Maltreatment Classification Coding System (MCCS; Barnett et al., 1993).

RESULTS: Preliminary results to be presented include descriptive statistics of caregiver VIVBs, child ER, and intra-individual variability in VIVBs across conversation topics for over half of the (N = 439) CHS participants.

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