Browsing by Author "Najjar, Reema"

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The evocative effect of children's physiologocial stress reactivity on intrusive parenting
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Najjar, Reema; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Rebecca Brooker
Self-regulatory processes, such as effortful control, are important facets of development for children's long term adjustment. Effortful control is known to be influenced by biological processes that enable regulatory function. Specifically, better biological regulation is associated with better effortful control. The direction of environmental effects, however, is less clear. Although theoretical perspectives support the possibility that parent-child influences are bidirectional, studies of self-regulation -- both physiological regulation and effortful control -- have almost exclusively focused on a parent-to-child direction of effects. Almost no research has investigated the influence of children's physiological and behavioral regulation on parenting behaviors. My thesis explored one process by which physiological regulation, indexed through measures of neuroendocrine reactivity, and behavioral regulation, indexed as effortful control, may evoke intrusive behaviors in parents. I hypothesized that greater cortisol reactivity would predict lower levels of effortful control, which would subsequently predict greater intrusive parenting. I tested my hypothesis in a sample of preschool-aged children and their parents, capitalizing on a critical period for the development of self-regulation. Results indicate that cortisol reactivity did not work through effortful control to predict parent intrusiveness. However, effortful control did moderate the association between child cortisol reactivity and parent intrusiveness. Specifically, when children were high in effortful control, greater cortisol reactivity predicted greater intrusive parenting. This work sheds light the importance of considering bidirectional effects in the development of self-regulation in early childhood.
Parenting is Associated with Delta-Beta Coupling in Preschoolers
(Montana State Univeristy, 2017-04) Najjar, Reema
Parenting behaviors serve as early influences on children’s developing regulatory capacities (Kopp, 1982). Sensitive parenting, or parents’ ability to correctly interpret and respond to children’s signals is believed to support the development of regulation. In contrast, harsh parenting, or uninvolved, or punitive parent behaviors, is thought to diminish regulatory development (Ainsworth et al., 1974). Delta-beta coupling is believed to index functional crosstalk between cortical and subcortical systems of the brain (Knyazev, 2007). Though coupling has been studied as an index of neural systems of regulation in children, it is unclear whether parenting impacts coupling in ways that are consistent with developmental theory. Thus, we tested associations between parenting behaviors and delta-beta coupling as regulatory systems are developing. Using a measure of resting EEG, we found that preschoolers (N= 91, Mage= 3.60, SD = 0.15) with fathers low (vs. high) in harsh parenting showed greater coupling in parietal electrode sites (z = 2.66, p = 0.00) while fathers’ high (vs. low) harsh parenting was linked to greater coupling in frontal electrode sites (z = -2.14, p = 0.02). There were no significant findings in mothers (zs < 1.36). Heightened coupling was also seen at frontal sites for preschoolers who were high (vs. low) in social fear (z = -2.11, p = 0.02), suggesting that enhanced early coupling in frontal regions may expedite the development of frontal regulatory networks in order to cope with negative parenting and may serve as proxy of regulation-based risk for anxiety problems in young children.