Psychology

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    Parental Attachment Style: Examination of Links with Parent Secure Base Provision and Adolescent Secure Base Use
    (Taylor & Francis, 2014-06-05) Jones, Jason D.; Cassidy, Jude
    The secure base construct represents one of attachment theory’s most important contributions to our understanding of parent–child relationships and child development. The present study represents the first examination of how parents’ self-reported attachment styles relate to parental secure base provision and adolescent (mean age = 16.6 years, SE = .59) secure base use during an observed parent–adolescent interaction. Further, the present study is the first to examine how fathers’, as well as mothers’, attachment styles relate to observed behavior in a parent–child interaction. At the bivariate level, maternal avoidance, but not anxiety, was negatively associated with observed adolescent secure base use. In addition, path analysis revealed that maternal avoidance was indirectly related to less adolescent secure base use through mothers’ self-reported hostile behavior toward their adolescents and through adolescents’ less positive perceptions of their mothers. Further, paternal anxiety, but not avoidance, was indirectly related to less adolescent secure base use through fathers’ self-reported hostile behavior toward their adolescents. No significant findings emerged in relation to parental secure base provision. We discuss these results in the context of attachment theory and suggest directions for future research.
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    HIPPOCAMPAL SUBREGION VOLUME IN HIGH-RISK OFFSPRING PREDICTS INCREASES IN DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS ACROSS THE TRANSITION TO ADOLESCENCE
    (2020) Hubachek, Samantha Qirko; Dougherty, Lea R.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The hippocampus has been implicated in the pathophysiology of depression. This study examined whether youth hippocampal subregion volumes were differentially associated with maternal depression history and youth’s depressive symptoms across the transition to adolescence. 74 preadolescent offspring (Mage=10.74+/-.84 years) of mothers with (n=33) and without a lifetime depression history (n=41) completed a structural brain scan. Youth depressive symptoms were assessed prior to the neuroimaging assessment at age 9 (Mage=9.08+/-.29 years), at the neuroimaging assessment, and in early adolescence (Mage=12.56+/-.40 years). Maternal depression was associated with preadolescent offspring’s reduced bilateral hippocampal head volumes and increased left hippocampal body volume. Reduced bilateral head volumes were associated with offspring’s increased concurrent depressive symptoms. Furthermore, reduced right hippocampal head volume mediated associations between maternal depression and increases in offspring depressive symptoms from age 9 to age 12. Findings implicate reductions in hippocampal head volume in the intergenerational transmission of risk from parents to offspring.
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    Adolescent Attributions About and Responses to Imagined Future Romantic Partners’ Behaviors: Links to Adolescent Attachment to Parents
    (2020) Fitter, Megan Haley; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Attachment theory states that experiences with primary caregivers influence other close relationships throughout the lifespan (Bowlby, 1969/1982). The quality of early caregiving experiences influences children’s mental representations of how others will treat them. These representations guide social information processing, the way that individuals remember, perceive, hold expectations, and make attributions about their social world. The present study is the first to examine how young adolescents’ attachment to parents influences their attribution biases about future romantic relationships. Attachment insecurity with mothers and fathers predicted negative attribution biases about hypothetical future romantic partners. Insecurity to fathers marginally predicted negative attributions above those predicted by insecurity to mothers. Negative attributions, in turn, predicted adolescents’ forecasting their own negative behaviors in a future relationship. Further, adolescents’ attachment avoidance (discomfort with closeness) across both parents predicted negative attributions. Results suggest that attribution biases could explain relations between attachment to caregivers and later romantic relationship functioning.
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    Links Between Parental Responses to Adolescent Distress and Adolescent Risk Behavior: The Mediating Role of Thought/Emotion Suppression
    (2015) Jones, Jason Daniel; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The rates of substance use and unsafe sexual practices among America's youth are a major public health concern. The goal of this study was to examine novel inter- and intrapersonal predictors of adolescent risk behavior. Aim 1 of this study was to examine how supportive and unsupportive parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions relate to adolescent substance use and sexual behavior, and to test whether the tendency to suppress unwanted thoughts and emotions mediates this link. Aim 2 was to further explore the putative link between suppression and adolescent risk behavior by testing whether physiological arousal when viewing negative emotional stimuli mediates this link. Participants included 115 adolescents (mean age = 17.19 years, SD = 1.27; 48% female) and 109 mothers. Aim 1 analyses revealed limited support for the hypothesized links: (a) adolescent-reported unsupportive maternal responses were associated with greater self-reported suppression (but not the other two measures of suppression), which in turn was related to more frequent sexual behavior in the past year and (b) adolescent-reported supportive maternal responses were negatively associated with adolescent substance use in the past year. Aim 2 analyses did not support any links between suppression and physiological arousal or between physiological arousal and adolescent risk behavior. Overall, these results suggest some potential links among parents' responses to their adolescents' negative emotions, suppression, and adolescent risk behavior. However, the hypothesized links that were significant in the path models were between variables measured by adolescent self-reports; therefore, the findings should be viewed as preliminary. I discuss these findings in the context of the available literature on parental emotion socialization, suppression, and adolescent risk behavior, and suggest directions for future research that could move this area of inquiry forward.