Assessing Mothers’ Automatic Affective and Discipline Reactions to Child Behavior in Relation to Child Abuse Risk: A Dual-Processing Investigation

Abstract

Given the scope and adverse clinical consequences of child abuse, assessment of salient etiological factors can lend critical insights needed for abuse prevention. Increasingly, dual-processing models have been applied to aggression, which postulate that parallel automatic and conscious processes can evoke aggressive behavior, implicating both affective and cognitive elements in both routes. Using two samples of mothers ( n = 110 and n = 195), the current investigation considered evidence of the reliability and convergent, concurrent, and construct validity of the new Automatic Parent Emotion Analog Response task relevant to parent–child aggression, contrasted with a self-reported conscious processing measure. Findings provide evidence that affective reactions of both anger and worry relate to child abuse risk and inclination to respond aggressively, and demonstrate how mothers’ automatic reactions relate to both perceived child misbehavior and child dangerous behavior. Current results lend psychometric support for automatic processing in parent–child aggression consistent with other dual-processing theories of aggression.

Role of maternal emotion in child maltreatment risk during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Although parents’ personal stress and anxiety has received empirical attention as a risk factor for maltreatment risk during the pandemic (Kerr et al, 2021 ; Lee, Ward, Chang et al, 2021 ; Patrick et al, 2020 ), whether parents were worried about their children’s behavior (Li & Zhou, 2021 ) has not been adequately targeted as a specific, proximal contributor to child maltreatment risk. Research to date has rarely considered the role of parental worry regarding children’s behavior as an additional affective factor independent of anger that contributes to physical maltreatment risk (Pinderhughes et al, 2000 ; Rodriguez, Silvia et al, 2021 ). The current investigation indicated that maternal worry about children’s behavior was related not only to their perceived increased physical aggression toward their child since the pandemic began but to maternal self-report of neglectful behavior as well.…”

“…The measure was developed to assess negative child attributions and punishment intentions. In a recent expansion of the PCV (Rodriguez, Silvia et al, 2021 ), questions following the vignettes were expanded to include reports of emotion the parent would feel in response to the scenario—the only known measure to assess both parental anger and worry regarding children’s behavior. For each vignette, the mother indicated her level of anger in response to the scene, from 1 ( not angry or frustrated at all ) to 9 ( very angry or frustrated ), as well as indicating her level of worry about her child from 1 ( not worried about my child at all ) to 9 ( very worried about my child ).…”

“…One study in China during the pandemic indicated that parents’ worry about their children in particular was associated with their reports of more child behavior problems (Li & Zhou, 2021 ), although no connection was made to parents’ maltreatment risk. Some early work suggested mothers’ worry about their kindergarten children’s behavior significantly related to their severe discipline use (Pinderhughes et al, 2000 ) and more recent work has implicated maternal worry about children’s misbehavior in physical child maltreatment risk (Rodriguez, Silvia et al, 2021 ). Yet considerations of whether parental worry in response to children’s behavior serves as a proximal affective trigger for maltreatment behavior is rare; the focus in most child abuse prevention efforts that do incorporate negative affect have centered on anger.…”