Poster #56 - Is Executive Functioning a Protective Factor Buffering the Risk of Maternal Emotion Dysregulation and Child Behavior Problems?

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

There is increasing empirical attention on studying the relation between maternal emotion dysregulation, a transdiagnostic feature that cuts across multiple forms of psychopathology, as a potential risk factor for the emergence of psychopathology in children. However, there is less known about child characteristics that might serve as protective factors buffering this risk. One such child characteristic is executive functioning, which is the set of cognitive processes and skills necessary to plan and pursue goals (Anderson, 2002). A component of self-regulation, executive functioning develops rapidly during the preschool period. This study sought to examine if higher executive functioning in children served as a protective factor mitigating the transmission of psychopathology from high emotion dysregulation in mothers to emotional and behavioral problems in preschool age children.

Mother-preschooler dyads (N=88) were oversampled for maternal emotion dysregulation. Mother-child dyads completed a two-hour laboratory assessment where mothers completed a series of self-report questionnaires while children completed a number of executive functioning tasks. Maternal emotion dysregulation was measured using maternal self-report on the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. Mothers also reported on child internalizing and externalizing behaviors using the Child Behavioral Checklist. Child executive functioning was operationalized as a composite score of child performance on a number of tasks measuring cognitive inhibitory control (Day/Night); behavioral inhibitory control (Bear/Dragon); attention shifting and focusing (Dimensional Card Sort); and delay abilities (Gift Delay). A proportion score was calculated for each task and then averaged to create a composite score, where higher scores corresponded to higher executive function skills.

Hierarchical regressions showed that maternal emotion dysregulation significantly predicted child’s internalizing (B= .124, t= 4.282, p< .001) and externalizing behaviors (B= .104, t= 2.651, p< .010) when controlling for executive functioning. Child executive functioning did not significantly predict child internalizing (B= 1.031, t = 0.311, p = .757) or externalizing behaviors (B= -7.029, t= -1.568, p= .121) once maternal emotion dysregulation was included in the model, despite bivariate associations between child executive functioning and externalizing (r= -.230, p< .05) being significant. In contrast to our hypotheses, maternal emotion dysregulation did not significantly interact with child executive functioning to predict child internalizing (B= .053, t= 0.416, p= .679) or externalizing behaviors (B= -.012, t= -0.067, p= .947), suggesting that children with more executive functioning skills experience the same risk for behavioral problems as children who also have lower self-regulatory skills, if their mother has high levels of maternal emotion dysregulation.

These findings have strong clinical implications, as they suggest that certain child characteristics, such as higher self-regulation, which is a known protective factor in other contexts, such as poverty, or even maternal depression may not be in the context of heightened maternal emotion dysregulation. In other words, the effects of maternal emotion dysregulation may overwhelm a child’s ability to cope, even if that child is high in self-regulation. Interventions that specifically aim to increase maternal emotion regulation may therefore be a more effective way to improve child behavioral outcomes, rather than intervening with the child directly.

Authors

• Jacqueline O'Brien, University of Oregon
  Presenting Author

• Christina Gamache Martin, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maureen Zalewski, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author