engleski

Parenting Styles and Emotional Problems in Early School-Age Children: Mediation of Executive Functions

The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of executive functions in explaining relationship between family factors and emotional problems in early school-age children. Since problem behaviors such as emotional symptoms in childhood become salient predictors of internalizing problems in adolescence and adulthood, it seems important to investigate the role of potential protective factors in early school- age children. This study is part of a larger five-year prospective study examining the role of executive functions, individual, social and genetic outcomes in children (ECLAT). A representative sample of 175 parents of early school-age children was administered measures of parenting styles, children‘s executive functions and children‘s emotional symptoms. They completed The Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ ; Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen i Hart, 2001) including authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting style subscale, Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXY ; Thorell i Nyberg, 2008) including working memory, planning, regulation and inhibition subscale, and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire including emotional symptoms subscale (SDQ ; Goodman, 1997). Mediation analysis was conducted to investigate the role of children‘s executive functions in explaining the relationship between parenting styles and children‘s emotional problems. Analyses showed statistically significant indirect mediation effects of executive function deficits in the relationship between authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting style and emotional symptoms in early school-age children. The study concluded that executive function deficits contribute to the emotional difficulties of early school-age children whose parents employ authoritarian and permissive parenting style, and that authoritative parenting style buffers that effect. The study indicates that interventions should be aimed at parent education and children‘s executive function training programs in order to prevent the development of severe emotional problems in adolescence and adulthood.

childhood ; executive function deficits ; parenting dimensions ; emotional symptoms

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