Can physical discipline affect a child's brain?

This article was originally written by Rosie McCall and published on the IFL Science Facebook site. 20 SEP 2018.

Worldwide, there are only 60 countries that ban the use of corporal punishment on children in the home and at school. These include South Africa. We are aware that this legislation is largely unpopular. Many families and teachers still approve of spanking children as a form of discipline. Mention of spanking usually brings a response along the lines of “well, we were all spanked and we turned out OK.”

However, the opinion – at least from those at the UK Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) – is that regular spanking is not only ineffective (there are few reliable studies to show it dissuades future bad behaviour) but it can damage the health of children and adolescents. This view is supported by some research.

A review of studies, involving 75 papers over a 50-year period and more than 160,000 children, found that spanking is associated with 13 out of 17 measured outcomes, including poorer mental health in childhood and adulthood and higher levels of antisocial behaviour.

But can we believe these results? The American College of Pediatricians released a statement in response to the research, calling the analysis “woefully inadequate” and criticizing the researchers for relying too much on correlational data and ignoring “the beneficial findings of studies that have investigated appropriate ways of spanking in disciplinary situations traditionally considered appropriate.”

Nonetheless, young brains are especially pliable and these are just a handful of the ways spanking can have an effect.

Developmental delays:

An admittedly small-scale study published in the Annals of Global Heath earlier this year on 74 pairs of caregivers and their children found that spanking (and scolding, for that matter) was linked to developmental delays. In fact, children regularly spanked were five times as likely to experience language delays, though whether the spanking caused the language delays or vice versa (or whether there’s a third factor involved somewhere) is a little trickier to determine, so the results need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Reduced grey matter:

A 2009 study found that corporal violence was also associated with a significant reduction in grey matter, a tissue responsible for translating the sensory information we receive into chemical data our brain can understand. It is involved in everything from hearing to speaking to our emotions and self-control. But those who had been regularly spanked as children showed a 19.1 percent decrease in gray matter volume in the right medial frontal gyrus, 14.5 percent in the left medial frontal gyrus, and 16.9 percent in the right anterior cingulate gyrus.

Poorer mental health:

A 2012 study involving 34,600 US adults found that 2 to 7 percent of mental health disorders could be attributed to corporal punishment, specifically major depression, anxiety, and paranoia. Six percent of respondents reported being “pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit” by their parents and those that had were 59 percent more likely to be alcohol dependent, 41 percent more likely to have depression, and 24 percent more likely to have a panic disorder (again this is an association, not a cause-effect link). Which leads to…

Booze, drugs, and suicide:

In a 2017 study, researchers surveyed more than 8,000 adults aged 19 to 97 about their childhood history with spanking – the results were shocking. Those who had been spanked were 23 percent more likely to engage in moderate or heavy drinking and 32 percent more likely to use street drugs. What’s more, they were 37 percent more likely to attempt suicide.

Violent relationships:

It is not exactly surprising that children exposed to violence will go on to return the favour in adulthood, whether that is spanking their own children or hitting their partner. In a 2017 study, researchers interviewed 758 young adults and asked them how often they were spanked, slapped, or struck growing up as a physical form of punishment. They discovered that those that had were 29 percent more likely to commit violence when they were in a relationship. They were also more likely to be the receiver of violence. But it’s not just romantic relationships – a meta-analysis of 36 studies on corporal punishment found that parents who spanked their child were three times as likely to report their children as having aggressive behaviour later on.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.