Lin Sin-Ying, Schleider Jessica L, Eaton Nicholas R
Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2021 Mar;49(3):283-295. doi: 10.1007/s10802-020-00749-x. Epub 2021 Jan 6.
A vast array of family processes is linked to child mental development, among which (1) low parental acceptance and (2) high family conflict are known as transdiagnostic risk factors for child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. In contrast to most prior research adopting cross-sectional or lagged designs, the current study applied fine-grained multilevel modeling to elucidate the complex relationships among parental acceptance, family conflict, and child psychopathology, considering the nesting structure of children within families and longitudinal changes within children. We focused on preadolescents from the two-wave Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N = 4,953; aged 9-12) and accounted for parental psychopathology and sex differences. Our findings suggest that consistent between-family and between-child differences in parental acceptance play a transdiagnostic role for both child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, whereas family conflict is only significantly associated with externalizing psychopathology. Additionally, short-term within-family and within-child improvements in parental acceptance and family conflict across one year were associated with decreased externalizing, but not internalizing, psychopathology. These findings support the potential importance and feasibility of targeting these family process factors for child externalizing problems outside of an intensive treatment setting. We further discussed how such findings serve as a foundation for future research on family processes and child internalizing problems. The varying results across different grouping levels highlight the importance of decomposing within- from between-family/child effects in future studies on family processes and child psychopathology.
大量的家庭因素与儿童心理发展相关，其中（1）父母低接纳度和（2）高家庭冲突被认为是儿童内化和外化心理病理学的跨诊断风险因素。与以往大多数采用横断面或滞后设计的研究不同，本研究应用了细粒度多层次模型，以阐明父母接纳度、家庭冲突和儿童心理病理学之间的复杂关系，同时考虑到家庭中儿童的嵌套结构以及儿童自身的纵向变化。我们聚焦于两波青少年大脑认知发展研究中的青春期前儿童（N = 4953；9至12岁），并考虑了父母的心理病理学情况和性别差异。我们的研究结果表明，父母接纳度在家庭间和儿童间的一致性差异对儿童内化和外化心理病理学都具有跨诊断作用，而家庭冲突仅与外化心理病理学显著相关。此外，在一年时间里，家庭内部和儿童自身在父母接纳度和家庭冲突方面的短期改善与外化心理病理学的减少有关，但与内化心理病理学无关。这些发现支持了在强化治疗环境之外针对这些家庭因素来解决儿童外化问题的潜在重要性和可行性。我们进一步讨论了这些发现如何为未来关于家庭因素和儿童内化问题的研究奠定基础。不同分组水平上的不同结果凸显了在未来关于家庭因素和儿童心理病理学的研究中区分家庭/儿童内部效应和家庭/儿童之间效应的重要性。
