Open AccessPCIT engagement and persistence among child welfare-involved families: Associations with harsh parenting, physiological reactivity, and social cognitive processes at intake
Author(s) -
Amanda Skoranski,
Elizabeth A. Skowron,
Akhila Nekkanti,
Carolyn M. Scholtes,
Emma Lyons,
David S. DeGarmo
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
development and psychopathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.761
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1469-2198
pISSN - 0954-5794
DOI - 10.1017/s0954579421000031
Subject(s) - psychology , odds , developmental psychology , welfare , cognition , attribution , persistence (discontinuity) , intervention (counseling) , clinical psychology , logistic regression , social psychology , psychiatry , medicine , geotechnical engineering , political science , law , engineering
Parent-Child interaction therapy (PCIT) has been shown to improve positive, responsive parenting and lower risk for child maltreatment (CM), including among families who are already involved in the child welfare system. However, higher risk families show higher rates of treatment attrition, limiting effectiveness. In N = 120 child welfare families randomized to PCIT, we tested behavioral and physiological markers of parent self-regulation and socio-cognitive processes assessed at pre-intervention as predictors of retention in PCIT. Results of multinomial logistic regressions indicate that parents who declined treatment displayed more negative parenting, greater perceptions of child responsibility and control in adult-child transactions, respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) increases to a positive dyadic interaction task, and RSA withdrawal to a challenging, dyadic toy clean-up task. Increased odds of dropout during PCIT's child-directed interaction phase were associated with greater parent attentional bias to angry facial cues on an emotional go/no-go task. Hostile attributions about one's child predicted risk for dropout during the parent-directed interaction phase, and readiness for change scores predicted higher odds of treatment completion. Implications for intervening with child welfare-involved families are discussed along with study limitations.