Spanking and executive functioning in US children: A longitudinal analysis on a matched sample

Area of Science:

• Child Development
• Psychology
• Public Health

Background:

• Spanking is associated with negative child outcomes.
• Previous research on spanking and executive functions (EFs) is limited by selection bias.
• EFs include inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the causal link between spanking and children's EFs.
• To investigate the impact of low-frequency spanking on EFs.
• To test for moderation of the spanking-EFs link by child and parent characteristics.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a representative sample of 5-6 year old US children.
• Employed entropy-balanced matching to mitigate selection bias between spanked and non-spanked groups.
• Conducted lagged dependent variable regression analyses on the matched sample.

Main Results:

• Spanking at age 5 predicted lower inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility at age 6.
• The association between spanking and inhibitory control was evident even with low-frequency spanking.
• No significant moderation was found for child gender, parent race/ethnicity, or parental warmth.

Conclusions:

• Spanking is associated with diminished executive functioning in children.
• The impact of spanking on EFs varies across different EF domains.
• Findings underscore the importance of parenting practices for child cognitive development.