Christina M. Rodriguez - US grants

ABSTRACT Alarming child abuse statistics highlight that parent-child aggression (PCA) remains widespread in this country, adversely impacting the short-term and long-term emotional and physical welfare of children and incurring substantial costs to society. To avoid such detrimental outcomes, efforts to avert physical child abuse must identify and tackle the key factors that culminate in PCA. Although research has implicated a number of potential risk factors for PCA, major obstacles impede our progress. Heavy reliance on self-report questionnaires to measure constructs related to PCA can be biased, which confound our ability to conclusively identify the potential mechanisms that exacerbate risk for PCA. Most researchers also typically question parents about potential PCA risk factors while not in the act of parenting, asking them to summarize their experiences and beliefs about parenting, which may not accurately reflect actual parenting behavior or cognitions. To determine if a factor contributes to PCA and actual parenting behavior, we must be confident in how the factor was measured. Risk factors should also be theoretically grounded although often such factors are studied in isolation or inadequately integrated into a cohesive model. Thus, the current project will explore the feasibility of conducting an innovative, multi-method assessment of PCA risk in a group of 100 mothers who have substantiated cases of physical child abuse. Factors investigated in this assessment will reflect components of Social Information Processing (SIP) theory, a theoretical model that focuses on cognitive processes parents may experience that increase their abuse risk, although the model has not yet been comprehensively applied to abusive parents. In recent efforts to refine the SIP model, a more inclusive theoretical model will be considered in this study, with emotion, personal vulnerabilities, and resiliencies integrated with the SIP sociocognitive processes. This study will evaluate a selection of analog tasks?indirect assessment methods that utilize behavioral simulations or implicit means to assess a construct?with mothers substantiated for physical abuse. Analog tasks will be compared to traditional self-report approaches as well as more proximal parenting behavior and cognitions assessed via experience sampling methods (ESM). We capitalize on technological advances by using ESM with smartphones to assess daily parenting across four weeks. Findings will be relevant for both research and clinical purposes. Improved detection of particular elements of the theoretical model offer potential targets for prevention and intervention programs. Moreover, results from this project will provide initial insights into the feasibility of alternative methodologies to assess critical constructs related to PCA risk. With this initial project, subsequent research can then contrast substantiated perpetrators with comparison groups of varying risk status to determine the discriminant validity of analog tasks and later, whether such tools could ultimately be adapted to create computerized intervention and prevention strategies.

ABSTRACT Troubling child abuse statistics underscore that parent-child aggression (PCA) remains pervasive in the US. To protect children, efforts to prevent child abuse must tackle the most critical factors that lead parents to engage in PCA. To accomplish this, a number of research gaps need to be addressed. Most research inquiry has concentrated on maternal risk, overlooking factors relevant to fathers. And methodological limitations have compromised current research conclusions about the true role of any given factor in relation to PCA risk. The proposed project targets this last research gap, designed to provide preliminary evidence for an objective methodological assessment of parental reactivity?a process embedded in this study within a comprehensive model of PCA risk applied to both mothers and fathers. To determine whether a particular factor contributes to PCA risk, we must be confident in whether it was adequately measured. Consequently, the current study will evaluate whether physiological functioning in parents, as measured via salivary biomarkers, can serve as indicators of PCA risk. To date, studies suggest parental physiological reactivity to infant crying relates to harsh parenting, and physiological synchrony between parent and child relates to sensitive parenting. Higher testosterone levels have also been associated with reduced parental involvement. Thus, saliva samples will be assayed to determine levels of testosterone and levels of physiological synchrony between parents and their toddlers on salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol. Participants will be drawn from families enrolled in the Following First Families (Triple-F) study, a prospective longitudinal study on the evolution of PCA risk which has followed families since the last trimester of the mother's pregnancy. A diverse sample of parents was targeted, with half of the families constituting a risk group with sociodemographic disadvantages, to determine whether factors identified during pregnancy are more readily triggered to become abusive in certain groups. Triple-F participants were re-assessed when the child was 6 months and 18 months to investigate risk and resilience factors in new mothers and fathers that may shift during the transition to parenthood. Capitalizing on the rich dataset already available from these time points, salivary biomarkers from the parents will be linked to their self-report questionnaires, implicit and behavioral analog tasks, and coded observations of parent-child interactions. From the Triple F study sample, saliva will be assayed for salivary alpha-amylase and cortisol collected from 120 mothers and 100 fathers and their 18 month old toddlers, gathered before and after their structured parent-child interaction; saliva will also be assayed for testosterone in parents based on their initial saliva samples. These salivary biomarkers can provide an objective indicator of reactivity that represents an important early process in the theoretical model. Thus, this project will clarify the potential value of this methodological innovation, simultaneously evaluating which factors are most relevant to PCA risk within a theoretically based model, for both mothers and fathers.