Non-suicidal Self-injury History Moderates the Association Between Maternal Emotional Support and Adolescent Affect During Conflict.

Onset of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is most frequent during adolescence. Etiological models indicate that abnormal affective reactivity and regulation within interpersonal contexts is related to heightened NSSI risk. The current study examined the effects of maternal emotional support on adolescent sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity and observed anger during a conflict discussion among 56 mother-daughter dyads consisting of healthy adolescents and adolescents with a history of self-injury. During the conflict discussion task, maternal emotional support and adolescent anger were coded from behavior, and cardiovascular pre-ejection period was used to index SNS responding. Results demonstrated that maternal emotional support was negatively associated with adolescent anger and SNS activity during the conflict. However, these associations were not significant among adolescents with heightened NSSI history. Maternal emotional support may serve as an interpersonal mechanism for adolescent physiological and behavioral regulation, yet may function differently among adolescents with more frequent NSSI.

Maternal behavior predicts neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in preschoolers.

Separate lines of research have revealed that the rapid development of inhibitory control in the preschool period is closely tied to normative brain development and influenced by early mother-child interactions. One potential theory is that maternal behavior in the context of early interactions influences the neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in development, with implications for child behavior. The purpose of this paper was to examine whether maternal emotional support, measured during a mother-child problem-solving game, predicted child neural responses (frontal-central N2 event-related potential) and behavioral performance (discrimination index, d') in a go/no-go task of inhibitory control in a large, diverse sample of mother-child dyads (N = 276) observed in children's last year of preschool (mean age = 56 months). Results of a structural equation model revealed significant direct effects from maternal emotional support to child right hemisphere frontal-central N2 responses to no-go (inhibitory control) trials; greater observed emotional support predicted larger N2 responses. Larger right hemisphere N2 responses to no-go trials were also associated with better overall observed task performance (d'). A test of indirect effects from maternal emotional support to child observed performance via right hemisphere N2 responses was significant, suggesting that underlying neurophysiology is one mechanism through which maternal emotional support is associated with a child's rapidly developing inhibitory control behavior in the preschool period. This work joins a growing literature demonstrating that caregiver behavior within a "normative" range is an important environmental factor contributing to the development of neural processes supporting child functioning.