Grandmother-grandchild physiological synchrony in Chinese three-generation families: Links with child emotion regulation.

The current study examined the characteristics of physiological synchrony between grandmothers and grandchildren in Chinese three-generation families, and the associations between physiological synchrony and child emotion regulation. The participants included 92 children (age 8-10-year old) and their grandmothers. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was collected from both grandmothers and their grandchildren throughout a collaborative drawing task and a conflict discussion task. Child emotion regulation was measured using the Children's Emotional Management Scale. We found no evidence for an overall pattern of concordant or discordant synchrony within dyads. Instead, there was great variability in patterns of synchrony across dyads. During the collaborative drawing task, concordance in grandmother's RSA and grandchildren's subsequent RSA was linked with better emotion regulation. During the conflict discussion, concordance in grandmother's RSA and grandchildren's simultaneous RSA was linked with poorer emotion regulation. These results suggest that grandmother-grandchild synchrony in different directions, time lags, and contexts has different influences on children's emotion regulation. The findings of this study highlight the importance of contextual physiological co-regulation between Chinese children and their grandmothers for children's social-emotional development.

Previously institutionalized toddlers' social and emotional competence and kindergarten adjustment: Indirect effects through executive function.

Longitudinal multimethod data across three time points were examined to explore the associations between previously institutionalized toddlers' (N = 71; 59% female) socioemotional skills (Time Point 1: 18 months to 3-years-old), executive functioning (i.e., attention, working memory, inhibitory control) in the preschool years (Time Point 2: 2-4-years-old), and adjustment in kindergarten (5-6-years-old). Children were from multiple regions (35% Eastern European, 31% Southeast Asian, 25% African, and 9% Latin American), and 90% of adoptive parents were White from the Midwestern United States. Socioemotional competency at Time Point 1 was associated with fewer attention problems and greater inhibitory control at Time Point 2, which were subsequently associated with more observed social competence, greater observed classroom competence, and less teacher-reported teacher-child conflict in kindergarten. Indirect effects from socioemotional competencies in toddlerhood to kindergarten adjustment via executive functioning during the preschool period emerged. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Developmental antecedents of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in middle childhood: The role of father-child interactions and children's emotional underregulation.

The present study examined the influence of fathers' parenting quality during infancy on children's emotion regulation during toddlerhood and, subsequently, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in middle childhood. Fathers and their 8-month-old infants (N = 124) were followed over time to obtain home observations of parenting quality at 8 and 24 months, laboratory observations of children's emotion regulation at 24 months, and teacher reports of children's ADHD symptoms at 7 years. A path analysis revealed that fathers' emotional disengagement in infancy and minimizing responses to children's distress in toddlerhood forecast children's development of ADHD symptoms in middle childhood. Further, a significant indirect effect was found such that fathers' parenting at 8 and 24 months predicted subsequent development of ADHD symptoms at age 7 through toddlers' difficulty regulating emotion. Implications of this study for early intervention and directions for future research are discussed.

Emotion regulation as a predictor of patterns of change in behavior problems in previously institutionalized youth.

Longitudinal trajectories of psychopathology in previously institutionalized (PI) youth were identified and biobehavioral emotion regulation processes were examined as developmental mechanisms that predict these trajectories. Mental health data were collected from PI (N = 132) and nonadopted (NA; N = 175) youth across four time points (participant age ranged from 7- to 21-year-old). Using semiparametric group-based methods, the probability that each individual belonged to a distinct group that followed a specific pattern of behavior across time was estimated. We then tested whether unique aspects of emotion regulation (global, observed, and biological) were differentially associated with membership in externalizing and internalizing trajectory groups using multinomial logistic regression models. Four externalizing trajectories were identified for the PI and NA groups. For PI youth, global, observed, and biological emotion regulation processes were uniquely predictive of more adaptive externalizing trajectories. For NA youth, only parent-reported global emotion regulation was predictive of externalizing patterns. Three internalizing trajectories were identified for PI and NA youth. Generally, only parent-reported global emotion regulation predicted internalizing group membership for both PI and NA youth. Results suggest that biobehavioral emotion regulation processes may be particularly important predictors and potential points of intervention when targeting trajectories of externalizing behaviors in PI children.

Longitudinal associations between specific types of emotional reactivity and psychological, physical health, and school adjustment.

Using a multimethod, multiinformant longitudinal design, we examined associations between specific forms of positive and negative emotional reactivity at age 5, children's effortful control (EC), emotion regulation, and social skills at age 7, and adolescent functioning across psychological, academic, and physical health domains at ages 15/16 (N = 383). We examined how distinct components of childhood emotional reactivity directly and indirectly predict domain-specific forms of adolescent adjustment, thereby identifying developmental pathways between specific types of emotional reactivity and adjustment above and beyond the propensity to express other forms of emotional reactivity. Age 5 high-intensity positivity was associated with lower age 7 EC and more adolescent risk-taking; age 5 low-intensity positivity was associated with better age 7 EC and adolescent cardiovascular health, providing evidence for the heterogeneity of positive emotional reactivity. Indirect effects indicated that children's age 7 social skills partially explain several associations between age 5 fear and anger reactivity and adolescent adjustment. Moreover, age 5 anger reactivity, low-, and high-intensity positivity were associated with adolescent adjustment via age 7 EC. The findings from this interdisciplinary, long-term longitudinal study have significant implications for prevention and intervention work aiming to understand the role of emotional reactivity in the etiology of adjustment and psychopathology.

Mother and child hair cortisol during the COVID-19 pandemic: Associations among physiological stress, pandemic-related behaviors, and child emotional-behavioral health.

The current study assessed the associations between pandemic-related stressors and physiological stress, as indexed by hair cortisol concentration (HCC), for mothers and their children (N = 180) aged 5-14-years old (M = 8.91). The associations between maternal HCC and children's HCC and children's behavioral adjustment were also examined. Mothers reported on COVID-19-related behaviors and children's adjustment, and both mother and child participants collected and mailed hair samples between August and November of 2020. Results indicated that higher maternal HCC was correlated with living in a more urban environment, job loss, working from home, exposure to pandemic-related news, and social isolation. Child HCC was correlated with family job loss and social isolation. Mother HCC and child HCC were significantly associated, and this association was moderated by child age; younger children's HCC was more strongly associated with mothers' HCC than older children's HCC. Finally, maternal HCC was associated with greater child internalizing symptoms, but was not associated with children's externalizing symptoms. Child HCC was not associated with child behavior.

Pubertal stress recalibration and later social and emotional adjustment among adolescents: The role of early life stress.

The current study investigated whether recalibration of the hypothalamic-pituitary -adrenocortical (HPA) axis stress response in youth who had previously experienced early life stress (ELS) would predict socioemotional adjustment in a follow-up assessment approximately 2-4 years later when youth were 12- to 21-years old. The sample consisted of previously institutionalized (PI) (N = 96) youth and a comparison non-adopted (NA) group (N = 117). Youth were 16 years old on average at the time of the follow-up assessment. Parent and youth-reported measures were used to assess youth's internalizing symptoms and emotion regulation. Parent-reported measures were used to assess youth's externalizing symptoms. We tested whether showing cortisol increases (vs. not) across the peripubertal period was associated with later social and emotional adjustment differently for PI and NA youth. Significant interactions emerged showing that for PI youth only, increases in cortisol reactivity across the peripubertal period was associated with poorer subsequent socioemotional functioning.

Cortisol Reactivity and Socially Anxious Behavior in Previously Institutionalized Youth.

The current study investigated the association between cortisol stress reactivity to a social stressor and observed socially anxious behaviors both concurrently and over time among previously institutionalized (PI) (N = 132; ages 7-17) youth and a comparison non-adopted (NA) sample (N = 176). Cortisol reactivity was captured during the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C; Yim et al., 2015) and youths' social anxiety behaviors were coded during the speech portion of the TSST-C. Autoregressive cross-lagged panel models with structured residuals showed that for PI youth, greater cortisol reactivity predicted increases in socially anxious behavior during the TSST-C across three sessions. However, greater cortisol reactivity was negatively associated with concurrent social anxiety behavior. Thus, increases in cortisol reactivity across adolescence may aid in behavioral control in social situations in the short-term but may exacerbate PI youths' socially anxious behavior over time. No significant associations emerged for NA youth.

Adolescent Sleep and Mental Health Across Race/Ethnicity: Does Parent-Child Connectedness Matter?

OBJECTIVE: Sleep is vital for healthy development, yet most adolescents do not meet recommended nightly hours. Although racial/ethnic minorities often experience relatively worse sleep outcomes compared with White peers, little is known about how the sleep-mental health relationship holds across diverse groups or how family relationships affect this association. METHOD: Using data on 8th, 9th, and 11th grade public school respondents to the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey (N = 113,834), we conducted univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses to examine whether sleep duration was associated with depressive symptoms, suicide ideation, and suicide attempt, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Furthermore, we examined the effect of the parent-child connectedness by sleep interaction on these relationships. Analyses were conducted for 9 racial/ethnic groups collectively and separately. RESULTS: Overall, youth sleep duration and parent-child connectedness were independently associated with reduced rates of depressive symptoms, suicide ideation, and suicide attempt. There was significant interaction between parent-child connectedness and sleep, demonstrating that connectedness magnifies the benefits of the sleep-mental health relationship. Main effects of sleep and parent-child connectedness for mental health were similar for most individual racial/ethnic groups, although magnitudes varied. The connectedness-sleep interaction only remained significant for White and Asian youth on select suicide-related outcomes. CONCLUSION: Despite racial/ethnic differences, adolescent sleep and parent-child connectedness both seem to buffer youth from poor mental health in a large, multiethnic sample. On the whole, these factors demonstrate a synergistic protective effect and reflect promising intervention targets. The extent to which their interactive benefit translates across diverse populations requires additional study.

Measurement of Behavioral Emotion Regulation Strategies in Early Childhood: The Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ).

The Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ) assesses children's emotion regulation (ER) behavioral strategies in both positive and negative emotional contexts. Psychometric properties and factor structure were tested in a sample of caregivers across the United States (N = 362) with children ages 2-6 years-old (56% male; 73% White). Findings suggest that the EERBQ is psychometrically sound and correlates with other well-established measures of children's socioemotional functioning. Previously, researchers have only been able to assess children's emotional behavioral regulatory strategies in a laboratory setting. Thus, use of the EERBQ addresses a critical gap in the current literature by providing researchers and practitioners with an instrument to measure young children's early emotional functioning outside of a laboratory context. This is particularly salient because early difficulty regulating emotions is often a precursor to persistent adverse developmental outcomes. Thus, the ability to easily to collect rich and predictive behavioral regulation data is imperative for early identification and treatment of youths' emotional and behavioral problems.

Private Speech and the Development of Self-Regulation: The Importance of Temperamental Anger.

In this study (N=160), we observed children's private (i.e., self-directed) speech (PS) during a challenging puzzle task at age 3 and assessed whether the amount and maturity of their PS predicted their inhibitory control (IC) at age 4 and indirectly emotion regulation at age 9. Additionally, we examined whether the direct and indirect effects of PS were moderated by children's temperament. As expected, the maturity of children's PS was positively associated with IC and this association was stronger when children were reported as higher in anger reactivity by mothers (the interaction accounting for 11% of the explained variance). Children low in temperamental anger tend to have good IC and may not need to use PS. When children were at or above the mean on anger reactivity, PS maturity was indirectly associated with better emotion regulation at age 9 through an influence on IC at age 4 (index of moderated mediation =1.03 [.10, 3.60]). Findings suggest that PS is an important self-regulatory tool for 3-year-olds who typically experience and express anger.

Relations between frontal EEG maturation and inhibitory control in preschool in the prediction of children's early academic skills.

Maturation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) across the first few years of life is thought to underlie the emergence of inhibitory control (IC) abilities, which may play an important role in children's early academic success. In this growth curve modeling study (N = 364), we assessed developmental change in children's resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) activity (6-9 Hz 'alpha' power) from 10 months to 4 years and examined whether the initial levels or amount of change in frontal alpha power were associated with children's IC at age 4 and indirectly academic skills at age 6. Results indicated that greater increases in frontal alpha power across the study period were associated with better IC, and indirectly with better performance on Woodcock-Johnson tests of reading and math achievement at age 6. Similar associations between change in EEG and age 4 vocabulary were observed but did not mediate an association with academic skills. Similar analyses with posterior alpha power showed no associations with IC. Findings underscore the significance of frontal lobe maturation from infancy to early childhood for children's intellectual development.

Maternal socialization of child emotion and adolescent adjustment: Indirect effects through emotion regulation.

A fundamental question in developmental science is how parental emotion socialization processes are associated with children's subsequent adaptation. Few extant studies have examined this question across multiple developmental periods and levels of analysis. Here, we tested whether mothers' supportive and nonsupportive reactions to their 5-year-old children's negative emotions were associated with teacher and adolescent self-reported adjustment at age 15 via children's physiological and behavioral emotion regulation at age 10 (N = 404). Results showed that maternal supportive reactions to their children's negative emotions were associated with children's greater emotion regulation in a laboratory task and also a composite of mother and teacher reports of emotion regulation at age 10. Maternal nonsupportive reactions to their children's negative emotions were uncorrelated with supportive reactions, but were associated with poorer child physiological regulation and also poorer mother- and teacher-reported emotion regulation at age 10. In turn, better physiological regulation at age 10 was associated with more adolescent-reported social competence at age 15. Furthermore, teacher and mother reports of emotion regulation at age 10 were associated with increased adolescent adjustment across all domains. Mediational effects from nonsupportive and supportive reactions to adolescent adjustment tested via bootstrapping were significant. Our findings suggest that mothers' reactions to their children's negative emotions in early childhood may play a role in their children's ability to regulate their arousal both physiologically and behaviorally in middle childhood, which in turn may play a role in their ability to manage their emotions and behaviors and to navigate increasingly complex social contexts in adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Developmental patterns of respiratory sinus arrhythmia from toddlerhood to adolescence.

Parasympathetic nervous system functioning as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is widely used as a measure of physiological regulation. We examined developmental patterns of children's resting RSA and RSA reactivity from 2 to 15 years of age, a period of time that is marked by considerable advances in children's regulatory abilities. Physiological data were collected from a community sample of 270 children (116 males) during a resting period and during a frustration laboratory task when the children were 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 15 years old. We examined both stability and continuity in resting RSA and RSA reactivity across time. We found stability in resting RSA but not RSA reactivity from toddlerhood to adolescence. Separate multilevel models were used to examine changes in resting RSA and RSA reactivity from Age 2 to Age 15. The rate of change in resting RSA slowed from Age 2 to Age 15 with a plateau around Age 10. A splined growth model indicated that the rate of RSA reactivity increased from Age 2 to Age 7 and a modest slowing and leveling off from Age 7 to Age 15. Understanding the developmental characteristics of RSA across childhood and adolescence is important to understanding the larger constructs of self- and emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Associations between stress reactivity and behavior problems for previously institutionalized youth across puberty.

Megan Gunnar's pubertal stress recalibration hypothesis was supported in a recent study of previously institutionalized (PI) youth such that increases in pubertal stage were associated with increases in cortisol stress reactivity. This work provides evidence that puberty may open up a window of recalibration for PI youth, resulting in a shift from a blunted to a more typical cortisol stress response. Using the same sample (N = 132), the current study aimed to elucidate whether increases in cortisol are associated with increases in adaptive functioning or whether they further underlie potential links to developmental psychopathology. Specifically, we examined the bidirectional associations between cortisol stress reactivity and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms across three timepoints during the pubertal period. Youth reported on their own internalizing symptoms and parents reported on youths' externalizing symptoms. Cortisol reactivity was assessed during the Trier social stress test. Analyses revealed no associations between cortisol reactivity and externalizing symptoms across puberty for PI youth. However, longitudinal bidirectional associations did emerge for internalizing symptoms such that increases in cortisol reactivity predicted increases in internalizing symptoms and increases in internalizing symptoms predicted increases in cortisol reactivity. Findings suggest that recalibrating to more normative levels of cortisol reactivity may not always be associated with adaptive outcomes for PI youth.

Cognitive-affective strategies and cortisol stress reactivity in children and adolescents: Normative development and effects of early life stress.

This study examined cognitive-affective strategies as predictors of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses to a social-evaluative stressor in adolescence as compared to late childhood as a function of early life experiences. Participants included 159 children (9-10 years) and adolescents (15-16 years) divided into two groups based on early care experiences: non-adopted youth raised in their birth families (n = 81) and post-institutionalized youth internationally adopted from orphanage care (n = 78). Youth completed a version of the Trier Social Stress Test modified for use with children and reported on their trait emotion regulation and coping strategies. Children reported more use of suppression and disengagement than adolescents, while adolescents reported more engagement coping strategies. Non-adopted and post-institutionalized youth did not differ in reported strategies. Cognitive reappraisal predicted higher cortisol reactivity in non-adopted children and adolescents, and was not associated with reactivity in the post-institutionalized group. This study has implications for efforts aimed at promoting self-regulation and adaptive stress responses during the transition to adolescence for both typically developing children and children who experienced adverse early care.

Emotion regulation and cortisol reactivity during a social evaluative stressor: A study of post-institutionalized youth.

In the current study, we compared emotion regulation abilities between post-institutionalized (PI; N = 124) and never-institutionalized non-adopted (NA; N = 172) children and adolescents (7-15 years). We assessed cortisol reactivity and coded emotion regulation during the speech portion of Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-M). Parents reported on their children's social, academic, and behavioral adjustment. Results suggest that emotion regulation abilities increased with age, but this increase was greater for NA than PI youth. With regard to cortisol, piecewise growth modeling revealed that at higher levels of emotion regulation PI youth had greater baseline values (after a period of time allowing for acclimation to the laboratory) and had steeper recovery slopes than NA youth. There was also a main effect of emotion regulation on the reactivity slope suggesting that for both groups, as emotion regulation increased, the cortisol reactivity slope decreased. Finally, greater emotion regulation predicted fewer internalizing behavior problems for PI youth but not for NA youth.

Comparison of Institutionally Reared and Maltreated Children on Socioemotional and Biological Functioning.

The current study compared behavioral and adrenocortical functioning of maltreated (N = 91) and comparably aged (1.5-3 years) institutionally-reared children soon after (1.5-2.5 months) placement in foster care or adoptive homes, respectively. Foster and adoptive parents reported on the children's socioemotional competence and behavior problems, experimenters scored fear and positive affect to laboratory tasks, and diurnal cortisol measures were obtained. We sought to address whether these early contexts, characterized by different types of neglect and deprivation, have differential effects on young children's development. We found little support for the argument that either context results in uniformly poorer functioning soon after removal from adversity. Maltreated children were less fearful and more positive when exposed to both positive and novel events than institutionally-reared children. However, maltreated children were reported to have more behavior problems than did institutionally-reared children, and institutionally-reared children showed more typical declines in cortisol throughout the day than the maltreated children. These findings increase our ability to construct more targeted and effective interventions for these populations.

Childhood self-regulation as a mechanism through which early overcontrolling parenting is associated with adjustment in preadolescence.

We examined longitudinal associations across an 8-year time span between overcontrolling parenting during toddlerhood, self-regulation during early childhood, and social, emotional, and academic adjustment in preadolescence (N = 422). Overcontrolling parenting, emotion regulation (ER), and inhibitory control (IC) were observed in the laboratory; preadolescent adjustment was teacher-reported and child self-reported. Results from path analysis indicated that overcontrolling parenting at age 2 was associated negatively with ER and IC at age 5, which, in turn, were associated with more child-reported emotional and school problems, fewer teacher-reported social skills, and less teacher-reported academic productivity at age 10. These effects held even when controlling for prior levels of adjustment at age 5, suggesting that ER and IC in early childhood may be associated with increases and decreases in social, emotional, and academic functioning from childhood to preadolescence. Finally, indirect effects from overcontrolling parenting at age 2 to preadolescent outcomes at age 10 were significant, both through IC and ER at age 5. These results support the notion that parenting during toddlerhood is associated with child adjustment into adolescence through its relation with early developing self-regulatory skills. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cardiac vagal regulation in infancy predicts executive function and social competence in preschool: Indirect effects through language.

Parasympathetic nervous system functioning in infancy may serve a foundational role in the development of cognitive and socioemotional skills (Calkins, 2007). In this study (N = 297), we investigated the potential indirect effects of cardiac vagal regulation in infancy on children's executive functioning and social competence in preschool via expressive and receptive language in toddlerhood. Vagal regulation was assessed at 10 months during two attention conditions (social, nonsocial) via task-related changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). A path analysis revealed that decreased RSA from baseline in the nonsocial condition and increased RSA in the social condition were related to larger vocabularies in toddlerhood. Additionally, children's vocabulary sizes were positively related to their executive function and social competence in preschool. Indirect effects from vagal regulation in both contexts to both 4-year outcomes were significant, suggesting that early advances in language may represent a mechanism through which biological functioning in infancy impacts social and cognitive functioning in childhood.