Objectives Based on a socio-cognitive approach, this work explores the information processing mechanisms associated with abusive and neglectful parental behavior. Specifically, the present research examines the errors and biases of mothers’ cognitive processing of caregiving information associated with child abuse and child neglect, namely mothers’ preexisting schemata and perception and interpretation of child’s signals. The role of intellectual functioning and poverty in this association was also explored. Method A sample of 200 mothers (half with at least one child referred to child protection services) completed measures of explicit and implicit parental attitudes, recognition of children’s emotions, and attributions about children’s behaviors. Abuse and neglect were measured with self-report and professionals-report instruments. Results Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that maladaptive parenting is related to more biased preexisting cognitive schemas. Specifically, more neglectful mothers reported higher inadequate explicit parental attitudes and revealed more biases when making implicit associations with parenting. Moreover, the results indicated that whereas more abusive mothers showed a lower performance only when recognizing negative emotions, more neglectful mothers demonstrated a lower overall ability in recognizing children’s emotions. Further, more neglectful mothers attributed child behavior more to internal causes of the child and felt less in control of the child's behavior, while mothers scoring higher on child abuse attributed the child’s misbehavior more to stable and global causes. Additionally, neglect results were mainly found for the professionals’ report measure, and results for abuse emerged predominantly with the self-report measure. Conclusions Overall, results suggest that maltreating mothers present errors and biases in their cognitive processing of childrearing-related information, as proposed by the SIP model. The findings of the current research program are likely to constitute important theoretical contributions to unravel parental cognitive information processing mechanisms underlying child maltreatment, namely child abuse and child neglect. This is particularly important given the scarcity of research on the specificities of child neglect. Additionally, this research emphasizes the importance of using multiple information collection methods in risk assessment protocols and child maltreatment evaluation. Moreover, considering the influence of other determinants such as parents’ intellectual functioning and socioeconomic status is aligned with emerging evidence suggesting that parents’ executive functioning is critical to developing and maintaining adequate parenting practices, especially when in poverty.

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