Coaching parents to boost happiness in 4–6-year-old children

Maternal Positive Affect Socialization and Child Neural Reward Response

This test sees if three brief parent coaching sessions that encourage child positive emotions can increase reward-related brain responses in 4–6-year-old children of mothers with elevated depression.

Quick facts

• Phase: NA
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 180 (estimated)
• Ages: 4 Years to 99 Years
• Sex: All
• Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh (other)
• Locations: 1 site (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
• Trial ID: NCT06725160 on ClinicalTrials.gov

What this trial studies

This randomized mechanistic trial enrolls mother-child dyads (mothers with elevated depressive symptoms and children ages 4–6) and randomizes them to three sessions of parent coaching focused on encouraging child positive affect or three sessions of general parenting support. Researchers measure children’s neural reward response using event-related potentials (ERPs) and observe affective behavior before and after the intervention, as well as during in-the-moment interactions. The aims are to characterize baseline relations between maternal socialization and child reward circuitry, test whether coaching-related changes in maternal behavior lead to increases in child neural reward response over time, and examine momentary effects of maternal encouragement on child neural signals. This design is intended to isolate a potential causal pathway linking modifiable parental behavior to early neural markers of reward and risk for depression.

Who should consider this trial

Good fit: Ideal candidates are mother-child pairs where the mother is the biological birth mother aged 18 or older with elevated depressive symptoms and the child is 4–6 years old without major psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, or neurological disorders.

Not a fit: Children with existing psychiatric or neurodevelopmental diagnoses, very high internalizing or externalizing symptoms on the CBCL, or families unable to attend in-person lab visits are unlikely to receive benefit from this specific protocol.

Why it matters

Potential benefit: If successful, the intervention could offer a brief, parent-delivered approach to strengthen young children's brain responses to reward and reduce early risk markers for depression.

How similar studies have performed: Previous research shows parenting emotion coaching can change parental behavior and is associated with improved child socioemotional outcomes, but direct experimental evidence that brief coaching increases children's neural reward responses is limited, making this approach relatively novel.

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion Criteria for Mothers:

* Birth mother (biologically female, any gender)
* Providing regular care for participating child (i.e., at least 50% of time)
* Elevated, clinically significant levels of depression (16 or higher on CES-D)
* Aged 18+

Exclusion Criteria for Mothers:

* Lifetime history of a bipolar disorder
* Lifetime history of a psychotic disorder

Inclusion Criteria for Participating Child:

-Aged 4-6 years

Exclusion Criteria for Participating Child:

* T-score greater than 63 on the internalizing or externalizing composites of the CBCL
* Lifetime history of a psychiatric illness
* Lifetime history of neurodevelopmental disorder
* Lifetime history of neurological disorder

Where this trial is running

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

• University of Pittsburgh — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States (RECRUITING)

Study contacts

• Principal investigator: Judith M Morgan, PhD — University of Pittsburgh
• Study coordinator: Julie Research Coordinator

Conditions: Depression, Parent-Child Relations, depression, reward, neural, behavior, parent, early childhood