Parent Encouragement And Coaching of Happiness in Youth

Not Applicable

Not yet recruiting

• Conditions: Depression; Parent-Child Relations

• Registration Number: NCT06725160
• Lead Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh

Brief Summary

The goal of this mechanistic clinical trial is to examine whether parent-coaching aimed at increasing child positive affect will increase child neural response to reward. The main questions it aims to answer are:

Aim 1. Characterize child neural reward response and its relation to maternal socialization of positive emotions at baseline in healthy young children.

Aim 2. Evaluate how coaching-related changes in maternal socialization of positive emotion expression contribute to increases in child neural reward response over time.

Aim 3. Examine how maternal socialization of positive emotion expression contributes to increases in child neural reward response in the moment.

Participating mother-child dyads will be randomized to either 3 sessions of parent coaching of child positive affect or 3 sessions of a general parenting support intervention and neural response to reward and affective behavior will be examined pre and post intervention.

Detailed Description

Reward-related brain function is consistently linked to greater motivation, pleasure, and goal-directed behavior and lower risk for depression across the lifespan. Healthy neural reward response supports socioemotional development, particularly during early childhood as self-regulatory skills and child reward-related brain function are rapidly developing in the context of the caregiving environment. Maternal socialization of positive emotion is one important influence on early reward circuitry development. Mothers with depression are more likely to discourage (and less likely to encourage) child positive emotions compared to healthy mothers, which may contribute to early neural reward alterations in their children. Characterizing mechanisms of influence of maternal socialization on child neural reward response and positive emotion during early childhood is a critical window of opportunity when parents have a large influence on child socioemotional development. Importantly, maternal behavior is amenable to change by training parents on emotion coaching, and these maternal behavior changes may result in direct and immediate changes in child neural reward function. Thus, the overarching aim of this proposal is to use a mechanistic trial design to experimentally test the hypothesis that maternal encouragement of child positive emotion will lead to in-vivo increases in child neural reward response. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are uniquely suited to non-invasively assess in-vivo, fast-occurring changes in child reward response during parent-child interactions, including reward positivity (RewP), and the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. Toward this aim, the investigators will randomize 180 mothers with clinically significant depression symptoms and their 4- to 6-year-old children (50% female) to receive either 3 control sessions or 3 positive emotion coaching modules from the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED, which trains mothers on how to encourage positive emotion in their young children. Children will complete reward tasks at pre- and post-coaching, while neural reward response is assessed via ERP (RewP and LPP) with their mothers present allowing for in-vivo assessment of maternal behavior. At both timepoints, the investigators will assess child neural reward response and mothers' self-reported maternal socialization behaviors. Understanding how disrupted neural reward responding develops in early childhood is critical for the promotion of child emotional wellness and can be directly used to develop preventive interventions tailored to young children at familial risk for depression.

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2024-11
• Study First Submitted: 2024-12-05
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-12-05
• Study First Posted: 2024-12-10
• Last Update Submitted: 2025-05-05
• Last Update Posted: 2025-05-08
• Study Start: 2025-07-01
• Primary Completion: 2029-02-01
• Study Completion: 2029-02-01

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 180

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Reward Positivity (RewP)	From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)	The Reward Positivity (RewP) ERP component of the EEG signal is the mean amplitude (μV; microvolt) on gain-loss trials during receipt of reward related feedback in a computerized reward task with higher RewP amplitudes indicating greater reward response (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Parent Responses to Child Positive affect Scale (PRCPS)	From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)	Change in total score (sum of 7-point Likert scores) on the mother-reported Parent Responses to Child Positive affect Scale (PRCPS) encouragement subscale. The range of possible scores for this outcome is 0 to 84 with higher scores reflecting higher encouragement (i.e., more favorable outcome).
Behavioral Coding of Parental Encouragement of Child Positive Emotion	From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)	Parent and child positive emotion will be coded separately on a 0 - 2 scale in 5 second increments. Parental encouragement of child positive emotion will be calculated as the proportion of epochs in which mothers display positive emotion subsequent to child positive emotion expression in the previous epoch. Higher scores indicate greater parental encouragement of child positive emotion (i.e., more favorable outcome).
Late Positive Potential (LPP)	From baseline week 1 to final assessment week 5 (week 10 maximum)	The Late Positive Potential (LPP) ERP component of the EEG signal is the mean amplitude (μV; microvolt) on positive-negative trials during a picture viewing computerized task. Great LPP amplitudes to positive vs. neutral pictures indicate greater response to positive affect (i.e., more favorable outcome).

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Pittsburgh; 🇺🇸 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States