Integrating neural and momentary assessment of parenting, arousal, and adolescent substance use

Project Summary/Abstract
Adolescence is a risk period for increases in substance use (SU). Also, SU rates are increasing for
adolescent girls, however sex differences in SU are under-studied. Given the public health problem of
adolescent SU, it is critical to identify risk factors for SU and use those to develop accessible gender-sensitive
SU preventions. One risk factor for SU is maladaptive parenting. Maladaptive parenting may lead to lead SU
through its effects on adolescent emotion and reward-related arousal. My NIH-funded line of developmental
research, using laboratory and fMRI methods, has found that maladaptive parenting predicts heightened
negative emotional arousal for girls and heightened reward arousal for boys, which predicts increased SU
(R01-DA033431). However, these lab/MRI findings are limited in that they do not capture real-world proximal
associations among parenting, arousal, and SU. My other line of research has found that interventions that
improve parenting can prevent adolescent SU (R01-DA052427). However, parenting interventions are limited
in that they are not accessible to all parents and do not address momentary real-world parenting.
To address this, the proposed K02 Award would provide me with protected time (through release from
teaching and administrative duties) and advanced training in momentary science to transform my lines of
developmental and intervention research and to transform those scientific fields. The K02 would provide me
with hands-on training in conceptual models of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), EMA collection and
analyses, fMRI-EMA analyses, sensor integration, and ecological momentary intervention (EMI) development.
With this training, I will more fully characterize sex differences in mechanisms of parenting effects on SU and
will identify targets for accessible smart-phone delivered momentary parenting-focused interventions to prevent
SU. The K02 study would add a 4 week EMA of parenting, adolescent emotion and reward arousal, and SU to
my ongoing lab/MRI R01 study with a subset of 75 adolescents at their 3 year follow-ups (at age 15-16, during
escalation of SU). I will use this EMA to understand momentary parenting, arousal, and SU associations (by
sex) in real world contexts. I will leverage already collected fMRI data from the R01 when youth were age 12-
13 to examine whether adolescents’ earlier fMRI responses moderate momentary EMA associations.
This K02 Award would enhance my research by allowing investigation of interplay between
neurobiological risk and sensitivity to momentary real-world parenting behaviors. The K02 study will benefit
from the already recruited and MRI scanned youth in the R01 study who are being followed through the R01
for 3 years with extensive longitudinal assessments. The K02 Award will allow hands-on training in EMA to
transform my program of research, pilot data for a R01 application to conduct a large EMA-fMRI study, and
training and pilot data for me to develop momentary interventions that reduces negative parenting (or
adolescent arousal in response to parenting) in the moment in real world settings to prevent adolescent SU.

Grant Number: 5K02DA058840-03
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Tara Chaplin