Sandra T. Azar - US grants

Abusive and inadequate parenting has been shown to be associated with both subtle and severe psychological disturbances in children, as well as neurological and other physical damage. A clear understanding of factors leading to such parenting is crucial for effective intervention development. The proposed series of studies will attempt to provide information bearing on a cognitive explanation of maladaptive parenting. The studies proposed will examine four cognitive factors that are posited as interfering with the steps of social information processing parent-child transactions such that more negative and less positive parental responses result. These factors are unrealistic expectations of what is appropriate child behavior, attributions of negative child intent, poor problem solving, and low perceived parenting efficacy. Five studies will be conducted. The first three will employ paper and pencil measures and will assess: 1) whether heightened levels of these cognitive disturbances are characteristic of samples at-risk for maladaptive parenting (abusive mothers, intellectually low functioning mothers, and adolescents with an abusive caretaking history) and 2) whether these factors are associated with higher levels of punitiveness in responses made to hypothetical aversive child behavior. Two additional studies with abusive and nonabusive mother samples will examine whether the first of these cognitive disturbances, unrealistic expectations relates to parental cognitive responses (parents' attributions, problem solving, and efficacy) and behavioral reactions in situations involving actual childbearing stress (e.g. naturally occurring discipline situations in the home and a laboratory manipulation of teaching success/failure). Measures of contextual factors (life event stress and social support) and mood state will also be employed to explore their relative contribution to predicting parental responses. Finally, a preliminary attempt will be made to relate these cognitive disturbances to child outcome by including a measure of child behaviors problems. Information gained from these studies will aid in the refinement of cognitive approaches to treating child maltreatment and parenting inadequacy by providing a clearer understanding of the manner in which social information processing occurs in parenting situation both in normal parents and individuals showing evidence of parenting risk.

The Department of Psychology at Clark University is establishing an undergraduate laboratory network in support of the teaching of observational and experimental methods in psychology through hands-on experience. For more than half of the Department's major students, the high point of their curriculum is participation in the Department's Research Course Program. The Research Course Program is a system of courses in which advanced undergraduate students work closely with faculty and graduate students in faculty laboratories. Their work usually culminates in a presentation at a local, regional, or national research conference. This project provides three undergraduate laboratories. It provides equipment for faculty research settings that are specifically dedicated to undergraduate use. It will also outfit a "research skills room" where sophomores preparing for research experiences may simulate experimental and statistical decision making and practice observational techniques. Finally, it provides and equips a "Poster/Presentation Room," where research course students can prepare poster and pamphlet presentations.

Neglect affects large numbers of children each year and its negative health, social, emotional and academic consequences to children are well documented. Despite this, there has been little theoretical or empirical work identifying its causes. Social information processing (SIP) theory argues that disturbances in parents'cognitive system (knowledge structures, executive functioning, and appraisal processes) play a role in parenting risk and explain neglect's occurrence. To date, this model has shown value in understanding abuse, but has not been well examined in neglect. It may have particular relevance to neglect given there is an association between neglect and parental intellectual limitations. The goal of the proposed project is to extend its validity to child neglect and to explore SIP as a mediator between IQ and neglect. It will examine a sample of low SES mothers, half of whom are perpetrators of neglect and half of whom have no child protection history and who also vary in level of intellectual limitations. Two goals will be pursued: (1)To extend the validation of the social information processing (SIP) Model with Child Protective Services (CPS) identified neglectful mothers and with a sub-group of intellectually limited mothers who are at particular risk for neglect (with a preliminary replication of this goal using direct measures of neglect further validating the SIP model's utility for explaining neglect);and (2) To examine whether the SIP problems which neglectful parents exhibit extend beyond parenting into other interpersonal and non-interpersonal domains, further increasing child risk (i.e., SIP in adult-adult relationships;more general EF such as cognitive flexibility). The link of SIP problems to neglect will be examined controlling for other already identified intrapersonal and contextual correlates. If SIP problems are identified as linked to neglect, this will be useful for developing (1) specific targets in interventions for neglectful parents (especially ones with lower IQs) and (2) screening devices for identifying those at risk of becoming neglectful (especially among lower IQ parents). Findings would inform existing cognitively-based intervention and prevention work and reduce the number of children suffering long term negative sequelae..

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed project is to examine the role of maternal sleep in the etiology of child neglect, the most common form of maltreatment. Sleep difficulties disrupt vigilance, attention, affective processing, and decision making, which may account for neglectful parents' pervasive inattentiveness to children's basic needs, inability to identify and respond appropriately to children's immature capacities, poor planning and monitoring, and failures to flexibly adapt to child cues and environmental risks. The project will examine sleep in neglectful and non-neglectful mothers of preschoolers and explore links to the parenting risks observed in neglect, including lower responsiveness and flexibility, poor parent-child synchrony, and maladaptive household qualities (e.g., chaos, lack of routines, poor supervision). Links to child outcomes will also be explored. This project will extend validation o a social information processing (SIP) model of neglect's etiology by examining an additional potential antecedent to neglect. In prior work, we established that neglectful mothers show heightened SIP deficits (e.g., poor executive functioning, attributional biases) and that these cognitive factors are associated with maladaptive caregiving and problematic home environments. The associations with neglect held after controlling for factors seen as causal to neglect including maternal IQ, life stress, low resources, depression, and maltreatment history. This new work will expand on these findings by examining links between maternal and child sleep, SIP, neglect, and the child outcomes seen in neglect. Sleep is strongly linked to cognition, but has not been studied in neglect. Sleep difficulties negatively impact cognition and have been cited as contributing to errors in human judgment in everything from car accidents to nuclear power plant mishaps. Using an urban, disadvantaged sample of neglectful and non-neglectful mothers of preschoolers, this study will examine: 1) whether maternal sleep difficulties are linked to maladaptive parenting, disorganized, unpredictable home environments, and risk for child neglect; 2) whether match of mother-child sleep patterns is linked to synchrony and dyssynchrony in mother-child interactions, problematic home environments and neglect; and 3) test a model wherein mothers' sleep difficulties and poor match of mother-child sleep patterns lead to SIP deficits (and/or exacerbate their consequences) and increase maladaptive caregiving, problematic home environments, and risk for neglect. This study will also explore proximal environmental factors (e.g., light, temperature, screen time) that may regulate sleep and could be targeted in interventions. Exposure to neglect leads to many negative outcomes in children and is costly, with chronic neglect using nine times the social service dollars of othe forms of maltreatment. Neglect rates have remained stable over the last two decades, and few valid etiological models of neglect exist to inform interventions. This study will elaborate on a model that has already shown promise in explaining neglect. Moreover, as sleep been shown to be amenable to interventions, findings would inform much needed interventions.