Do emotion regulation difficulties explain the association between executive functions and child physical abuse risk?

Spotlight on Maternal Perceptions of Child Behavior: A Daily Diary Study with Child Welfare-Involved Mothers

“…Prior research investigating at-risk parenting has relied on summative information regarding parents’ stress [ 13 , 14 , 15 ], coping [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], and perceptions of child behavior [ 13 , 14 , 20 ]. However, the value of experience sampling methods permits the consideration of how state-like versus trait-like such assessments may be.…”

“…One of the most robust predictors of parental child abuse risk that has been documented worldwide is parents’ stress e.g., [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ], including differences in stress between parents who have versus have not been identified as abusive [ 11 ], and data on parental stress from longitudinal studies [ 13 ]. Although protective factors are empirically examined less often, parents’ stronger coping skills have been linked to their lower child abuse risk [ 16 , 17 ], including longitudinal studies tracking coping across time [ 18 ], with evidence that better emotion regulation and frustration tolerance reduce the likelihood of child abuse [ 15 , 19 ]. However, how stress versus coping may contribute to perceptions of children’s behavior by parents who are at risk to abuse remains unclear, although such parental perceptions likely influence parent-child conflict.…”

Ecological validity in measuring parents’ executive function

“…Emotion regulation appears to be supported by stronger connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, a structure underlying reactive emotion (Banks et al, 2007). Risk for behaviors such as harsh parenting increases in moments of parental negative emotion, and less effective EFs associate with risk for physical abuse via emotion dysregulation (Crouch et al, 2018). Despite the emotional nature of parenting (Dix, 1991) and evidence that stronger EFs attenuate negative affective responses to children (Deater‐Deckard et al, 2010), measures of parental EFs rarely represent hot executive processing (Fontaine & Nolin, 2012).…”

“…Still, when applied to parenting research, traditional EF measures have identified useful information. Across numerous studies, stronger performance on inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility tasks related to lower levels of harsh and abusive parenting (Crouch et al, 2018; Deater‐Deckard et al, 2010, 2012; Henschel et al, 2013; Sturge‐Apple et al, 2017) and higher levels of positive parenting behaviors (Chico et al, 2014; Rutherford et al, 2018; Yatziv et al, 2018; Zaidman‐Zait, 2020). Here, we review some of these findings.…”

“…Researchers (Chico et al, 2014) administered a version of the WCST to socioeconomically diverse teenage and adult Canadian mothers, finding that mothers with lower cognitive flexibility displayed less sensitivity with infants, defined as less awareness of infants' cues and less appropriate and contingent responding. In another study, researchers (Crouch et al, 2018) administered the Delis–Kaplan Color Word Interference Test (Delis et al, 2001; similar to the Stroop, 1935 task) to assess inhibition/switching skills in U.S.‐based socioeconomically and ethnically diverse mothers. They found that mothers with less effective inhibition/switching skills had a greater self‐reported risk for child physical abuse; this relation was mediated by mothers' emotion regulation difficulties.…”