ABSTRACT

Parent-youth relationships and parenting are critically important to adolescents’ development. The present study examined associations between parenting behaviors (which included observed parent emotion expression and negative and positive parenting behaviors during a parent-adolescent interaction) and adolescent brain structure, and sex differences in associations, in 66 12–14 year-olds. The study found that 1) among all adolescents in the sample, greater parent negative emotion expression in parent-youth interactions was associated with greater adolescent gray matter volume (GMV) in the left hippocampus, 2) parent positive emotion expression was not associated with adolescent GMV, 3) several associations differed by sex. These findings suggest that parenting is important for adolescent brain structure and future work should consider this by sex.

摘要

亲子关系和养育方式对青少年的发展至关重要。本研究调查了 66 名 12-14 岁儿童的养育行为（包括观察到的父母情绪表达以及父母与青少年互动期间的消极和积极养育行为）与青少年大脑结构之间的关联，以及关联中的性别差异。研究发现：1）在样本中的所有青少年中，父母与青少年互动中更多的父母消极情绪表达与青少年左侧海马灰质体积（GMV）更大有关，2）父母的积极情绪表达与青少年时期无关GMV，3) 一些关联因性别而异。这些发现表明，养育子女对青少年大脑结构很重要，未来的工作应该按性别考虑这一点。