How Neglect and Punitiveness Influence Emotion Kno

Authors: Margaret Wolan Sullivan Dennis P Carmody Michael Lewis

Publish Date: 2010/01/23

Volume: 41, Issue: 3, Pages: 285-298

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Abstract

To explore whether punitive parenting styles contribute to earlyacquired emotion knowledge deficits observable in neglected children we observed 42 preschool children’s emotion knowledge expression recognition time and IQ The children’s mothers completed the Parent–Child Conflict Tactics Scales to assess the recent use of three types of discipline strategies nonviolent physically punitive and psychological aggression as well as neglectful parenting Fifteen of the children were identified as neglected by Child Protective Services CPS reports 27 children had no record of CPS involvement and served as the comparison group There were no differences between the neglect and comparison groups in the demographic factors of gender age home language minority status or public assistance nor on IQ Hierarchical multiple regression modeling showed that neglect significantly predicted emotion knowledge The addition of IQ contributed a significant amount of additional variance to the model and maintained the fit Adding parental punitiveness in the final stage contributed little additional variance and did not significantly improve the fit Thus deficits in children’s emotion knowledge may be due primarily to lower IQ or neglect IQ was unrelated to speed of emotion recognition Punitiveness did not directly contribute to emotion knowledge deficits but appeared in exploratory analysis to be related to speed of emotion recognitionThese data were collected as part of a larger longitudinal study of maltreated children’s emotions and selfbeliefs sponsored by NIMH Grants R01MH59391 and R01MH64473 to Ml Lewis We thank Linda Camras for permission to use her independently validated photographs in this study and Nayra del C RodriguezSoto RISE Summer Intern for assistance with the recognition time data The authors do not have any conflicts of interest related to this project

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