Maternal alexithymia and caregiving behavior: the role of executive functioning - A FinnBrain Birth Cohort study

The growing interest in parental cognition calls for research clarifying how cognition interacts with other parenting determinants to shape caregiving behavior. We studied the interplay between executive functioning (EF; cognitive processes that enable goal-directed thinking and behavior) and alexithymic traits (characterized by emotion processing/regulation difficulties) in relation to emotional availability (EA; the dyad's ability to share an emotionally healthy relationship). As EF has been reported to shape parents' ability to regulate thoughts and emotions during caregiving, we examined whether EF moderated the association between maternal alexithymic traits, and EA.

Among 119 mothers with 2.5-year-olds drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort, EF was measured with Cogstate tasks, alexithymic traits with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and caregiving with the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS).

More alexithymic traits on the TAS-20 subscale Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT) were associated with poorer caregiving in a hierarchical regression analysis (ΔR² = 0.05, p = .01). A marginally significant moderation effect was found when adding the EOTxEF interaction term to the model (ΔR² = 0.03, p = .06). These associations weakened slightly when controlling for education level. Estimation of simple slopes and a Johnson-Neyman figure indicated a significant association between higher EOT and lower EAS, that increased in strength as EF decreased from the group mean level.

The influence of cognitive alexithymic traits on EA could be especially pronounced among low EF parents, but further studies are needed to support and extend the findings. The potential role of parental reflective functioning in this context is discussed.