Maternal Personality and Child Temperamental Reactivity: Differential Susceptibility for Child Externalizing Behavioral Problems in China

Abstract

It is important to identify the developmental antecedents of externalizing behavioral problems in early childhood. The current study examined the main effects of maternal personality and its interactive effects with child temperamental reactivity in predicting child externalizing behavioral problems, indicated by impulsivity and aggression. This study was composed of 70 children (Mage = 17.6 months, SD = 3.73) and their mothers. The results showed that maternal agreeableness was negatively associated with child impulsivity. Child temperamental reactivity moderated the effect of maternal conscientiousness on child impulsivity in support of the differential susceptibility model. Specifically, for highly reactive children, maternal conscientiousness was negatively associated with child impulsivity whereas this association was non-significant for low reactive children. Child reactivity also moderated the contribution of maternal neuroticism to child impulsivity. That is, maternal neuroticism was negatively associated with impulsivity, only for highly reactive children.

Individual differences in sensitivity to positive home environment among children “at risk” for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A review

“…Although, as noted, most of these studies focused on a negative-neutral range of the environmental aspect and did not include aspects of positive parenting or home environment. Other studies found evidence of differential susceptibility in predicting ADHD symptomatology, meaning that susceptible individuals were more sensitive to both negative and positive aspects of the environment (12, 13); such a pattern was also found in a study that examined impulsivity behaviors, which are considered a main symptom domain of ADHD, but ADHD symptoms were not fully assessed (22). Other studies found evidence of a vantage sensitivity pattern (15,101), meaning that some individuals were sensitive only to positive, or less negative, aspects of the environment.…”

“…2 Specifically, high reactive children whose mothers had high levels of conscientiousness showed the lowest levels of impulsivity, even compared to low reactive children. However, high reactive children whose mothers had lower conscientiousness showed the highest levels of impulsivity, suggesting a pattern of differential susceptibility (22).…”

“…Therefore, no evidence for sensitivity to positive aspects of parenting was found. Aspects of temperamental reactivity (22,96), inhibitory control (15), and effortful control (101) were also found to indicate susceptibility to the environment. In Xing et al's study, infant temperamental reactivity was found to moderate the effect of maternal conscientiousness on infants' impulsivity.…”

“…The existence of sensitivity to aspects of parenting and home environment in ADHD has been supported by several studies including studies that used the candidate genes approach (12-14, 117-120), a few studies that examined temperamentby-parenting interactions (15,22,96,101), and a single study that examined the familial risk for ADHD according to maternal ADHD symptoms (16). In the next sections, we briefly describe more traditional evidence that supported a sensitivity 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.927411 to negative aspects of the home environment and then discuss more recent evidence that examined the plausible positive effect of parenting and the home environment.…”

“…For example, individuals at such risk, who also experience a low-quality home environment, would be at higher risk to manifest the disorder's symptoms, compared to individuals who are not at such risk (14,16). However, individuals at risk who experience a very supportive environment might disproportionally benefit from this experience, and even, for certain developmental outcomes, outperform their peers who are not at such risk (12, [17][18][19][20][21][22]. Therefore, these individual factors have been suggested to be susceptibility factors, rather than simply risk factors (23).…”