Mother-Child Interpersonal Dynamics: The Influence of Maternal and Child ADHD Symptoms

Abstract

The relations between maternal and child ADHD symptoms and interpersonal behaviour were examined. Motherchild dyads (N = 59), with children 8-to 12-years-old, exhibiting a range of ADHD symptoms, participated in a problem-solving task. Participants' interpersonal behaviours (along continuums of affiliation: friendliness-hostility and control: dominance-submissiveness) were coded on a continuous moment-to-moment basis, as the interaction unfolded, using a joystick technique. Elevated ADHD symptoms, in both mothers and children, were associated with less overall affiliative interpersonal behaviour. Further, while dyads generally showed complementary behaviour, dyads in which the child had elevated ADHD symptoms demonstrated less complementarity on the affiliation dimension. Finally, the higher the child's ADHD symptoms, the less affiliative and less dominant the mother became over the course of the interaction. Findings highlight ways in which individual differences in ADHD behaviour impact interpersonal functioning and have implications for interventions aimed at enhancing parent-child relationships.

Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory: Integrating Structure, Dynamics, Temporal Scale, and Levels of Analysis

“…To expand on the brief review of dispositional interpersonal findings above, results using these "dynamic" approaches to examine interpersonal functioning find that individuals vary considerably in their interpersonal behavior within and across situations in predictable ways. For instance, the fine-grained second-by-second coding method of Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (Lizdek et al, 2012;Girard & Wright, 2018), has revealed that conflict tasks are characterized by more cold behavior than nonconflict tasks and more negative affect in response to coldness (Hopwood et al, 2020), mother-child interaction patterns were associated with less affiliative behavior as a function of ADHD diagnosis (Nilsen et al, 2015), maternal control is influenced by evocative gene-environment correlations (Klahr et al, 2013), and that wives' depressive symptoms influenced dynamics of dominance (wife increased while husband decreased over the interaction) but husbands' depressive symptoms influenced dynamics of affiliation (affiliation in husband and wife decreased over the interaction; Lizdek et al, 2016). Looking across situations in daily life using ecological momentary assessment, detailed articulations of contextualized dynamic processes associated with psychopathology have been empirically modeled, such as the perceptions of withdrawal→negative affect→hostility characteristic of borderline pathology (Sadikaj et al, 2013), or perceptions of dominance→negative affect→hostility characteristic of narcissistic pathology (Wright et al, 2017).…”

Contemporary integrative interpersonal theory: Integrating structure, dynamics, temporal scale, and levels of analysis.

“…To expand on the brief review of dispositional interpersonal findings above, results using these “dynamic” approaches to examine interpersonal functioning find that individuals vary considerably in their interpersonal behavior within and across situations in predictable ways. For instance, the fine-grained second-by-second coding method of Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (Girard & C Wright, 2018; Lizdek et al, 2012), has revealed that conflict tasks are characterized by more cold behavior than nonconflict tasks and more negative affect in response to coldness (Hopwood et al, 2020), mother–child interaction patterns were associated with less affiliative behavior as a function of ADHD diagnosis (Nilsen et al, 2015), maternal control is influenced by evocative gene-environment correlations (Klahr et al, 2013), and that wives’ depressive symptoms influenced dynamics of dominance (wife increased while husband decreased over the interaction) but husbands’ depressive symptoms influenced dynamics of affiliation (affiliation in husband and wife decreased over the interaction; Lizdek et al, 2016). Looking across situations in daily life using ecological momentary assessment, detailed articulations of contextualized dynamic processes associated with psychopathology have been empirically modeled, such as the perceptions of withdrawal→negative affect→hostility characteristic of borderline pathology (Sadikaj et al, 2013), or perceptions of dominance→negative affect→hostility characteristic of narcissistic pathology (Wright et al, 2017).…”

Variance Decomposition of the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (CAID) system: Assessing sources of influence and reliability of observations of parent-teen interactions

“…The CAID system assesses interpersonal dynamics as they unfold in real time and models interpersonal processes at the individual and dyadic level, capturing contextual nuance and the reciprocal nature of these dynamics. The CAID has shown promise in understanding parent-child interactions, demonstrating that they can be reliably coded and linked to indicators of adjustment [ 12 , 14 , 15 ]. For example, our prior work with this sample examined whether interpersonal dynamics between parents and adolescents varied as a function of discussing various topics related to alcohol and cannabis use, and whether CAID parameters were associated with a variety of parenting and substance use outcomes [ 12 ].…”

“…Further, deviations from complementarity have been hypothesized to be associated with psychopathology [ 31 ] and important therapeutic processes [ 32 , 33 ]. For instance, Nilsen et al [ 15 ] tested whether warmth and dominance complementarity varied between children and their mothers as a function of child Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms. They found lower warmth complementarity when children exhibited high ADHD symptoms, suggesting that parent-child dyads with a lower tendency to reciprocate warmth also had a higher likelihood of severe child ADHD symptoms.…”

“…The CAID is an observational coding method where raters use a computer joystick to continuously assess changes in warmth and dominance during an interaction [ 13 ]. The CAID has successfully been applied to studies of married couples and romantic partners [ 10 , 11 , 16 ], patients and therapists [ 32 , 34 ], unacquainted undergraduates [ 13 , 35 ], and parents and their children [ 11 , 12 , 14 , 15 ]. These studies have yielded novel insights into interpersonal dynamics that would be missed with typical, aggregate assessments of interpersonal behavior.…”