The Impact Of Parental Corporal Punishment On Children's Executive Function And Its Mechanisms

Parental corporal punishment is a widely used harsh parenting practice around the world(Straus & Field,2003;C.S.Tang,2006;M.Wang & Liu,2014),as well as a form of childhood adversity or early-life stress for children,and thus commonly play an important role in child development(Gershoff,2002;Gershoff et al.,2012;Lansford et al.,2011;Perry et al.,2018).To date,researchers have paid much attention to examining the associations between parental corporal punishment and children's emotional and behavioral development.Yet,little attention was paid to reveal the relations parental corporal punishment and children's cognitive development.Executive function is closely associated with child development,and thus is an important cognitive basis for child development(Diamond,2013).Recently,despite significantly more empirical attention have been directed to the impact of parental corporal punishment on children's executive function and obtained plentiful valuable conclusions according to the ecological-transactional model,the stress model,and the dimensional model of adversity and psychopathology.However,there are still several important issues which are worthy of clarification and investigation in the further.Firstly,despite previous theory and empirical evidence suggested that parental corporal punishment may have cumulative effect on children's executive function,few studies have actually explored the potential cumulative effect of parental corporal punishment on children's executive function;Secondly,since the measure of children's executive function in prior research only relied on ratings or performance-based,it is still unknown whether parental corporal punishment related with both children's daily executive function and the optimal efficiency of executive function,or only related with one aspect of children's executive function;Thirdly,most prior research about the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's executive function has focused primarily in preschool children,few studies have examined the impact of parental corporal punishment on children's executive function in childhood.Forthly,previous research has drawn particular attention to mothers' corporal punishment or combined fathers' corporal punishment with mothers' corporal punishment.Yet,few studies have actually explored the association between fathers' corporal punishment with children's executive function.Finally,there is a dearth of literature investigating the mechanisms underlying the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's executive function.Based on the above consideration,the present study investigated the cumulative effect of both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment on children's daily executive function and the optimal efficiency of executive function,and further investigated their potential emotional and physiological mechanisms.In specific,in Research 1,the present study aimed to investigate the cumulative effect of both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment on children's daily executive function and the optimal efficiency of executive function to lay foundation for the following three mechanism study by conducting a longitudinal study to examine the impact of the initial levels and change over time of both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment on children's ratings of and performance-based executive function.Based on Research 1,Research 2 aimed to investigate the potential emotional mechanism by conducting a longitudinal study to examine the mediating role of children's negative emotion between the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's daily executive function and the optimal efficiency of executive function.Research 3 aimed to investigate the potential neuroendocrine mechanism by conducting a longitudinal study to examine the moderating role of children's diurnal rhythm of cortisol in the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's daily executive function.Finally,Research 4 aimed to investigate the potential cognitive neural mechanism by examining the impact of parental corporal punishment on children's inhibitory control using a two-choice oddball task and event-related potential measures(ERPs).In Research 1,we used three time-points(1 year apart)to model the cumulative effect of parental corporal punishment on children's executive function model.Participants were 710 primary school students in third and fourth grade and their parents.All fathers,mothers and children rated fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment towards children via the Chinese version of the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales(CTSPC)at all three time points,and rated children's executive function via a Chinese version of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function(BRIEF)at Time 3(T3).Children's performance-based executive function was examined by a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test(WCST)at T3.The latent growth curve model(LGM)was used to model the impact of the initial levels and change over time of parental corporal punishment on children's ratings of and performancebased executive function.For both mothers and fathers,the results revealed that higher initial levels and slower reduce speed of corporal punishment predicted children's more ratings of executive function problems.The results also revealed that higher initial levels of corporal punishment predicted children's better performance-based executive function,whereas the change over time of parental corporal punishment failed to predict children's better performance-based executive function.Such results revealed that both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment has a cumulative effect on children's daily executive function but not on the optimal efficiency of children's executive function.Based on Research 1,Research 2 children rated their negative emotion via Chinese version of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale,Children's Depression Inventory,and Daily Positive and Negative Emotions Scale.The children's negative emotion was added in the LGM model in Research 1 to model the mediating role of children's negative emotion between parental corporal punishment and children's executive function.For both mothers and fathers,the results revealed that higher initial levels and slower reduce speed of corporal punishment predicted higher levels of children's negative emotion,and higher levels of children's negative emotion further predicted children's more daily executive function problems.Children's negative emotion play as a mediating role in the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's daily executive function,but not in the relations between parental corporal punishment and the optimal efficiency of children's executive function.In Research 3,Participants were 179 primary school students in fifth grade and their parents.Children's saliva was collected during 3 days at 9:00 a.m.and 4:00 p.m.at T1.Both fathers and mothers rated their corporal punishment towards children via the Chinese version of the CTSPC at all three time points,and all fathers,mothers and children rated children's executive function via a Chinese version of the BRIEF at T3.We used data from three time-points(1 year between the T1 and T2,half year between T2 and T3)to model a LGM model to investigate the moderating role of children's diurnal rhythm of cortisol in the relations between the initial levels and change over time of parental corporal punishment and children's daily executive function.Results demonstrated that children's diurnal rhythm of cortisol only moderated the relation between the initial level of mothers' corporal punishment with children's daily executive function.Specially,the initial level of mothers' corporal punishment was more strongly associated with children's difficulties in daily executive function in the low-declined cortisol group than in the high-declined cortisol group.In Research 4,16 children who exposed parental corporal punishment above average level at least at two time points and 16 children who never exposed parental corporal punishment from participants in Research 1.A two-choice oddball task was used to examining the impact of parental corporal punishment on children's inhibitory control.Results demonstrated that children who exposed corporal punishment exhibited larger amplitudes at deviant-related P3(related with amount of cognitive resources recruited for later response decision making and inhibitory control processes),but at equal amplitudes at deviant-related N2(related with response conflicts detecting)than children who never exposed corporal punishment.To summary,to the best of our knowledge,the present study is the first study to explore the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's executive function,and potential mechanisms in the relations in Chinese culture context.The present study revealed that both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment significantly associated with children's daily executive function and the optimal efficiency of executive function.Both fathers' and mothers' corporal punishment have a cumulative effect on children's daily executive function but not on the optimal efficiency of children's executive function.Regarding to the emotional mechanism,children's negative emotion only plays the mediating role in the relations between parental corporal punishment and children's daily executive function,but not in the relations between parental corporal punishment and the optimal efficiency of children's executive function.With regard to the neuroendocrine mechanism,children's diurnal rhythm of cortisol only moderated the relation between the initial level of mothers' corporal punishment with children's daily executive function.Regarding to the cognitive neural mechanism,children who exposed corporal punishment only exhibited fewer amount of cognitive resources recruited for later response decision making and inhibitory control processes than children who never exposed corporal punishment.The present findings had great importance for furthering understanding of the relationships between parental harsh discipline and child development in Chinese culture context and applying this understanding to the development of more effective prevention and intervention parenting programs focusing on enhancing child development.