Psychology
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Item 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, JudeThe 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.Item Parents’ Self-Reported Attachment Styles: A Review of Links with Parenting Behaviors, Emotions, and Cognitions(Sage, 2015-02) Jones, Jason D.; Cassidy, Jude; Shaver, Phillip. R.For decades, attachment scholars have been investigating how parents’ adult attachment orientations relate to the ways in which they parent. Traditionally, this research has been conducted by developmental and clinical psychologists who typically employ the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to measure adult attachment. However, dating back to the mid-1990s, social and personality psychologists have been investigating how self-reported adult attachment styles relate to various facets of parenting. The literature on self-reported attachment and parenting has received less attention than AAI research on the same topic and, to date, there is no comprehensive review of this literature. In this article, we review more than 60 studies of the links between self-reported attachment styles and parenting, integrate the findings to reach general conclusions, discuss unresolved questions, and suggest future directions. Finally, we discuss the potential benefits to the study of parenting of collaborations among researchers from the developmental and social attachment research traditions.Item Empathy across development: Examination of multiple contexts and levels of analysis(2019) Stern, Jessica A; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Empathy—the ability to understand and “feel with” others’ emotional states, along with the tendency to feel concern for others’ wellbeing—shapes important aspects of social functioning across development (Eisenberg, 2017). In three empirical papers, we explore predictors of empathy across different stages of development, and across multiple levels of analysis within Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model. Paper 1 examined associations between brain structure and observed empathic responding among N = 78 school-aged children (4–8y). Larger bilateral hippocampal volume (adjusted for intracranial volume) predicted greater empathic responding, but only for boys. The association was not driven by a specific subregion of the hippocampus (head, body, tail), nor did it vary with age. Findings suggest that hippocampal structure contributes to individual differences in young children’s empathic responding, consistent with findings in adults (Laurita & Spreng, 2017). Paper 2 examined whether parental attributions and empathic emotions in response to child distress predicted 4-year-olds’ observed empathic responding two weeks later. In a sample of N = 88 mother–child dyads, bootstrapped mediation analyses showed that parents’ less negative and more situational/ emotion-focused attributions about child distress predicted parents’ empathy, which in turn predicted their children’s empathic responding to the experimenter’s distress. Findings shed light on the role of parents’ social information processing in the intergenerational transmission of empathic care. Drawing on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982), Paper 3 used experimental priming methods based to test whether temporarily enhancing adolescents’ feelings of relational security at school could increase their empathy for a bullied peer. Adolescents (13–15y; N = 234) were randomly assigned to imagine school-based experiences involving (a) receiving emotional support, (b) engaging in a fun social activity, or (c) engaging in a neutral activity; they then read a news story about a bullied peer and rated their feelings of empathy and willingness to help the victim. Multilevel modeling revealed no main effect of priming on adolescents’ empathy; however, dispositional attachment security significantly predicted empathy and willingness to help, pointing to the importance of dispositional security in social relationships for shaping empathy in school contexts.Item Executive Functioning and Parenting in Mothers of Children with and without ADHD(2016) Mazursky-Horowitz, Heather Michelle; Chronis-Tuscano, Andrea; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Parental scaffolding robustly predicts child developmental outcomes, including improved self-regulation and peer relationships, and fewer externalizing behaviors. However, few studies have examined parental characteristics associated with a parent’s ability to scaffold. Executive functioning (EF) may be an important individual difference factor associated with parental scaffolding. Yet, no research has examined parental EF in relation to scaffolding. Scaffolding may be particularly important for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) due in part to their core difficulties with inattention, disorganization, EF, and self-regulation, and the resulting need for greater structure, supervision, and consistency from parents. Moreover, parents of children with ADHD may experience greater challenges with scaffolding, both as a result of having a child with ADHD and their own increased risk for EF deficits. Yet, little research has examined child ADHD in relation to parental scaffolding. This study extends the extant literature on EF and parenting by examining individual difference factors associated with maternal scaffolding, and utilizing a multi-method assessment of maternal EF that may more effectively tap specific EF deficits associated with scaffolding. The current study aimed to examine: (1) the association between maternal EF and scaffolding, (2) the association between child ADHD symptoms and scaffolding, and (3) the interaction between child ADHD symptoms and maternal EF in predicting observed scaffolding. We hypothesized that deficits in maternal EF and child ADHD symptoms would each be negatively associated with observed scaffolding, and that child ADHD symptoms would interact with maternal EF deficits to predict the greatest deficits in observed maternal scaffolding. Results partially supported our hypotheses, in that some aspects of maternal EF, as measured by Digit Span and the Hotel Test, were predictive of observed maternal scaffolding. However, child ADHD symptoms did not significantly predict maternal scaffolding after controlling for child age, maternal education, and maternal EF; nor did the interaction of maternal EF and child ADHD symptoms. Working memory and task shifting may therefore be key components of parental EF that could be targeted in interventions designed to improve parental scaffolding.Item Maternal ADHD and parenting: The moderating role of maternal emotion regulation(2017) Woods, Kelsey; Chronis-Tuscano, Andrea; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Separate literatures have examined the associations between maternal attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and parenting and maternal emotion regulation (ER) and parenting. This study used a multi-method evaluation of parenting to examine the independent and interactive effects of maternal ADHD symptoms and ER on self-reported and observed parenting among families of school-aged children. We hypothesized that maternal ADHD symptoms and ER difficulties would be positively associated with negative parenting and negatively associated with positive parenting. We also hypothesized that maternal ADHD symptoms and ER difficulties would interact to predict the strongest association with negative parenting behavior. There were significant main effects of maternal ER difficulties on self-reported negative parenting and maternal ADHD symptoms on self-reported harsh responses to children’s negative emotions. Maternal ADHD symptoms and ER were not significantly associated with positive parenting or observations of parenting.Item Empathy in parents and children: Links to preschoolers' attachment and aggression(2016) Stern, Jessica A.; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Though theory suggests that parents’ empathy is important for children’s empathic development, the transmission of empathy from parent to child remains poorly understood. The goals of this investigation were to test an intergenerational model of empathy with child attachment as a potential mediating mechanism and to replicate findings linking child empathy to reduced risk for aggression. Eighty-nine preschoolers and their mothers completed measures of parent empathy, as well as child attachment, empathy, and aggression. Parent empathy predicted child empathy, but associations varied by the measure of empathy employed. Attachment did not mediate the association between parent and child empathy, although secure attachment predicted greater child empathy. Child empathy predicted aggression, but the direction of the effect varied by the measure of child empathy and by child sex. Findings shed light on the intergenerational transmission of empathy and highlight the importance of multi-method assessment in the study of empathy.Item 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.Item Parental Hostility and Parent Stress Physiology: The Moderating Role of Child Effortful Control(2014) Merwin, Stephanie; Dougherty, Lea R.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examined the moderating role of child effortful control on the association between observed parental hostility and parents' cortisol awakening response (CAR), a critical index of stress system functioning. Participants included 99 medication-free parents and their preschool-aged children. Parents obtained salivary cortisol samples at waking, 30, and 45 minutes post-waking and at bedtime across two consecutive days. Parental hostility was assessed during an observational parent-child interaction task, and child effortful control was assessed using parent report. Observed parental hostility was associated with parents' lower cortisol levels at 30 and 45 minutes post-waking and lower CAR. Low levels of child effortful control were associated with parents' lower bedtime cortisol. Moreover, results demonstrated an interaction effect between parenting and child behavior on parent CAR. The findings highlight the significance of continued examination of the neurobiology of parenting with a focus on the interactive effects between parenting and child behavior.Item The association between child gender and observed maternal responsiveness in mothers of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder(2007-04-19) Seymour, Karen E.; Chronis, Andrea M.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study examined the relationship between child gender and observed maternal responsiveness in mothers of 6-10 year old children with ADHD. Fifty-seven mother-child dyads participated in a 25-minute observed parent-child interaction comprised of both structured and unstructured tasks. Observed interactions were coded for overall and dimensional categories of maternal responsiveness. Results indicated that mothers of boys and mothers of girls with ADHD did not differ on either overall levels of responsiveness or individual dimensions of responsiveness (e.g., control, affect, etc.). However, responsiveness did vary as a function of child age and maternal race/ethnicity, with mothers of younger children and Caucasian mothers displaying higher levels of responsiveness. Implications and future directions are discussed.