Relations Between Trauma Exposure, Executive Functions, and Resilience among Resettled Refugee Parents and Children

Refugees are forcibly displaced from one country to another due to life-threatening circumstances such as war, terrorism, geopolitical conflict, natural disaster, and persecution. The functioning of adults and children following trauma exposure has been a focus of ample previous research; however, little empirical research has been conducted to dyadically explore how members of the same family may contribute to each other’s functioning in light of the high levels of traumatic stress commonly experienced before and after refugee forced migration. This community-engaged research project (the Kansas City Refugee Family Project) investigated how parent resilience is associated with child resilience after trauma exposure and whether or not this association is moderated by three factors of executive functioning (i.e., working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility). Ninety parent-child dyads (N=90) originating from Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia resettled to the United States (US) participated in this cross-sectional study. We collected data individually from parents (M=43.4 years; 80% female) and one of their children (M=15.3 years; 50% female) in the context of a home visit conducted by a team of multilingual data collectors and facilitated by the use of a remodeled data collection van. All participant recruitment was facilitated by community leaders serving resettled refugee communities in a large metropolitan region of the Midwestern US. Participants completed three objective measures of their executive functioning (i.e., Corsi Block Tapping Task, Go/No-Go Task, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test 64 Card Version). Participants then completed self-report questionnaires regarding their trauma exposure before and after resettlement to the US and their resilience. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was used as our analytical framework to explore potential associations between trauma and resilience and the moderation effects of working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility among parents and their children. Our results demonstrated that refugee parents in our sample with higher trauma exposure had children with higher trauma exposure. However, parents and their children respond differently to high trauma exposure experienced before and after their resettlement to the US. Refugee parents in our sample reported significantly greater resilience than refugee children, and our findings support that higher levels of trauma exposure may lead to lower levels of resilience in both refugee parents and their children. Our results suggest that working memory strengthens the adverse relationship between trauma exposure and resilience in refugee parents and children, and inhibitory control may directly affect the increase of resilience in refugees post-resettlement. We found no significant dyadic partner effects in our study sample. Recommendations and implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Kansas

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Guler, Jessy

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gudiño, Omar

• Clinical psychology
• dyad
• executive functioning
• mental health
• refugee
• resilience
• trauma

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright held by the author.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:19104

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kuscholarworks.ku.edu:1808/35977