The interplay between parenting and temperament in associations with children’s executive function.

Abstract

Guided by a domain-specific approach to parenting framework, this research examined differential associations among three domains of parenting (e.g., guided learning, reciprocity, control) and children's executive function. The second aim was examine whether child surgency and negative emotionality temperament traits moderated associations among the parenting domains and children's executive function in a manner consistent with differential susceptibility theory. The sample consisted of 160 mothers and their 5-year-old children. Results showed that guided learning was positively and uniquely associated with children's executive function, even after controlling for the other parenting and covariate variables. Child surgency only moderated the association between guided learning and children's executive function, and it was in a manner that was consistent with differential susceptibility theory. Unexpectedly, child negative emotionality selectively moderated the association between the control domain and children's executive function in alignment with the vantage sensitivity model.

Revisiting goodness of fit in the cultural context: Moving forward from post hoc explanations

“…As noted, due to a lack of predefined patterns of interactions that characterize the goodness‐of‐fit model, this model was mostly used as post hoc explanations for simple slope results found “unexpectedly” (e.g., Gagnon et al, 2014; Suor et al, 2019), rather than as a theoretical base for generating priori hypotheses. To address this issue, two directions are critical for refining this model: (1) clarifying what pattern of person × environment interactions is aligned with the goodness‐of‐fit conceptualization (and different from others), and (2) clarifying specificities of environmental factors and children’s factors in a given sociocultural context when generating hypotheses.…”

“…For example, U.S. mothers of mainly African American and European American children in Head Start rated their expectations for their children's temperament and the actual levels of temperament, and the correlation of these two ratings (a goodness-of-fit index) predicted children's social skills, with a better fit predicting better social skills (Churchill, 2003). Regarding the behaviors matching approach, interactions of socialization factors and children's characteristics are investigated as predictors of children's competence (e.g., Suor et al, 2019) and social adjustment (e.g., Leerkes et al, 2009). For instance, authoritarian parenting in a sample of relatively highly educated European American families predicted higher social competence for children with low temperamental reactivity, but this type of parenting predicted lower social competence for their counterparts with high reactivity (Gagnon et al, 2014).…”

“…With the rise of other models with well-defined patterns to characterize such interactions (see Figure 1a-c), the goodness-of-fit model has been more or less marginalized. In recent literature, researchers returned to this model only to interpret results in a post hoc manner when their data failed to support other models (e.g., Suor et al, 2019), rather than using the goodness-of-fit model to construct testable hypotheses to compare with other models. In this article, we discuss how researchers can formulate and test the goodness-of-fit model to further enhance understanding of person × environment processes.…”

Interactions Between Child Personality and Parenting in Relation to Child Well-Being: Support for Diathesis–Stress and Differential Susceptibility Patterns

“…A study from the United States has shown that compared to low-plasticity peers, children high in biobehavioral plasticity had more internalizing problems at ages 5.5–12 years if there was parental discord at age 4.5, but fewer problems when the relationship between their parents was harmonious (Brock et al, 2017 ). A recent study found that in the context of lower quality guided learning, 5-year-old children high in surgency showed lower levels of executive function skills than their low-surgency peers, but in the context of higher quality guided learning, they showed higher levels of executive function than children low in surgency (Sour et al, 2019 ). In another study, boys high in positive emotionality were especially susceptible to the effects of chronic interpersonal stress on the levels of social anxiety and depression, for better or for worse (Griffith et al, 2020 ).…”

Maternal depressive symptoms and language development: The moderating role of child temperament.

“…In contrast, to our knowledge, only one other study has identified the broadband dimension of surgency as a marker for differential susceptibility. Suor et al (2019) found that surgency interacted with parent-guided learning practices in a “for better and for worse” manner in predicting subsequent executive functioning skills. These results highlight the need to examine whether differential susceptibility operates in a domain-general or domain-specific fashion (Belsky & Pluess, 2009).…”