The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of song-based music therapy interventions on psychosocial factors for people who have had Acquired Brain Injuries (ABI) or Spinal Cord injuries (SCI) and their caregivers during acute rehabilitation. The psychosocial factors in this study involve mood states, caregiving experiences, and dyadic relationships. The study also examined the correlation between care recipients and caregivers on mood states and the dyadic relationship. A quasi-experimental, two-group pretest-posttest design without a control group was used to investigate the psychosocial factors. A total of 10 dyads were recruited for the study. Group A in this study were care recipients; Group B were caregivers of Group A. The dyad attended four individual music therapy sessions of approximately 45-minute duration over a period of 14 days. During the song-based music therapy protocol, the participants were empowered to choose between singing along or listening to their preferred music. Caregiver participants had the option to participate in either in-person or virtual sessions. Three measures were used to investigate psychosocial factors: Visual Analogue Mood States (VAMS), Positive Aspects of Caregiving (PAC), and Dyadic Relationship Scale (DRS). VAMS was used pre and post each intervention while PAC and DRS were only used before the first session and the last session. All statistical analyses were conducted in R, a statistical program. The Wilcoxon test and Kendall’s rank correlations were used to examine the pre- and post-intervention changes and the correlation between Group A and Group B on mood states and the dyadic relationship. The findings of the study indicated that there were significant changes in mood states for both Group A and Group B. There were four strong correlations in the dyadic relationship between caregivers and care recipients, including feeling closer to each other, feeling angry toward the other, having more patience than they have had in the past, and feeling relationships with each other were strained. Implications for music therapy practice and recommendations for the field and future research are also presented. / Music Therapy

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among early parenting experiences, adult mental health functioning, and adult parenting behaviors among a population of incarcerated women in San Bernardino, CA. An archival data set was utilized. Data were collected from three hundred thirty-six female participants in the San Bernardino County Jail System in 2011, aged 18 – 60 years (M = 34.02). Only those who are mothers (N=132), with children between the ages of two and 18 years old, participated in the current study. Structural equation modeling was conducted using EQS. Results showed that early experiences, specifically adverse childhood experiences, were strongly predictive of adult mental health. Surprisingly, adult mental health was not predictive of adult parenting behaviors. Adult parenting behaviors, though, were strongly predictive of the quality of parent-child relationship. Contrary to expectation, the hypothesized relationship between early experiences and adult parenting behaviors was not supported. The implication of these findings is that the central task of interventions seeking to improve adult mental health should include a focus on the impact of negative early experiences.

Optimal responsiveness to infant cues, an integral component of parental caregiving, is thought to be determined by multiple factors including maternal mood, previous experiences of caregiving, and infant characteristics. This thesis builds on previous work and details novel investigations of brain, affective, and attitudinal responses to infants/children. In the first two studies, we investigated the effects of maternal mood and parity (previous experiences of caregiving) on brain response to affectively positive infant pictures using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that mothers with postpartum depression showed an elevated right amygdala response to infant pictures in comparison to mothers without PPD and depressed non- mothers. Further, functional connectivity between the bilateral amygdalae and the right insular cortex was negatively correlated with clinical symptoms (self-reported depression and anxiety). Therefore, as depression and anxiety symptoms increased amygdala to insular cortex connectivity decreases and vice versa. In the third study, we developed a novel data-driven infant cuteness (DDIcute) metric using the infant pictures presented in the first two studies. In line with ethological postulations on cuteness (infant characteristics), we found that infant pictures with a higher DDIcute score were associated with increased positive/approach-related affective responses and decreased negative/avoidant-related affective responses. In the fourth study, we investigated whether the sex differences in attitudes about children and childcare were moderated by pet ownership/care (previous experiences of caregiving). We found that pet ownership and care eliminated sex differences in attitudes about children and childcare. This effect was driven by males; compared to males with low levels of experience caring for pets, males with high levels of experience caring for pets had more positive attitudes about children and childcare. / Thesis / Doctor of Science (PhD) / The work presented in this thesis adds to literature on human caregiving. In different studies we investigated brain, emotional, and attitudinal responses to human babies and children in people with and without depression as well as in people with different levels of caregiving experience. In the first two studies, we measured brain response to smiling baby pictures in depressed and non-depressed mothers and non-mothers. The amygdala is a brain region that is involved in the neurobiology underlying both depression and maternal behaviour. We found that amygdala response was the highest among mothers with postpartum depression. We also found that the coupled activity of the left and right amygdalae and another brain region called the insula was altered in mothers with postpartum depression. In the third study, we measured facial features of the baby faces presented in the first two studies to develop a measure of cuteness. We also measured emotional responses to the baby faces. We found that cuter infants elicited more positive and less negative emotional responses. In the fourth study, we measured differences in attitudes about children and caregiving between men and women who did and did not own and care for pets—specifically dogs and/or cats. We found that compared to men who did not own and/or care for pets, men who had more experience caring for pets had more positive attitudes about children and childcare.