Maternal emotion socialization trajectories in an early-childhood, predominantly White sample.

Several developmental theories identify caregiver emotion socialization (ES) as predicting multiple child psychological outcomes, including anxiety. The present study delineated developmental trajectories of mothers' ES practices, specifically the initial levels and growth across time of their supportive and nonsupportive responses to their young children's emotions. To contextualize the developmental role of these processes, we examined multiple predictors (i.e., maternal emotion dysregulation, child negative emotionality, demographic covariates) and one outcome (i.e., child anxiety) of ES trajectories, as well as how trajectories varied by emotion type-sadness, anger, or worry. We investigated these questions in a community sample of 173 predominantly White, non-Hispanic mother-child dyads who participated at four time points when children were aged 2-5 years, with assessments 1 year apart. Mothers reported on study variables. Results varied by ES type. Mothers' supportive global and emotion-specific ES were highly stable across time and did not relate to predictors, outcomes, or demographic covariates. Mothers endorsed gradual decreases in nonsupportive ES across time, with some variations across emotion type. Nonsupportive responses to worry and sadness each comprised two classes varying by intercept and slope. Nonsupportive worry responses linearly decreased, whereas nonsupportive sadness responses linearly increased. Across global and emotion-specific models, maternal emotion dysregulation, child negative emotionality, and demographic covariates showed unique relations with nonsupportive ES intercept and slope. Trajectories were mostly unrelated to later child anxiety, with the exception of class-specific differences for nonsupportive worry responses. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization.

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage  = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

Profiles of adolescents' sadness, anger, and worry regulation: Characterization and relations with psychopathology.

Adaptive emotion regulation (ER) reflects competence in effective emotion expression and emotion coping, both of which are critical to mitigating psychopathology risk. The current study extends past work on adolescent ER in three ways. First, using a functionalist framework, we focused on discrete emotions, examining how adolescents may differentially express and cope with sadness, anger, and worry. Second, we used a person-centered approach to determine whether subgroups of youth report different patterns of managing emotions. Third, to provide indices of validity and replicability, we characterized ER profiles in two independent community samples of adolescents and in relation to psychological adjustment (i.e., depression, anxiety, aggression), concurrently and longitudinally. Sample A comprised 202 youths (Mage = 12.90 years, 52.5% girls) participating at two time points 2 years apart. Sample B comprised 500 adolescents (Mage = 14.06 years, 60.2% girls), 99 of whom participated again 6 months later. Latent profile analyses per sample revealed similar three-profile solutions, such that adolescents were classified into the Expressive Coping (i.e., high regulation coping, low inhibition), Inhibited Coping (i.e., high regulation coping, high inhibition), or Dysregulated Anger (i.e., low anger coping, low anger inhibition) group. Youth in the Dysregulated Anger group reported elevations in depression and, in some instances, anxiety and aggression. Psychological adjustment for the other groups differed by sample. Profile membership did not predict change in symptoms over time. As such, adolescents vary in the extent to which their ER is global versus emotion-specific, in both replicable and, potentially, clinically meaningful ways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal Worry Socialization and Toddler Inhibited Temperament: Transactional Associations and Stability across Time.

Caregiver socialization of child emotions has consequences for both typical development and anxiety risk, with caregivers' non-supportive responses to worry perhaps especially salient to children's anxiety development. Children, in turn, impact the caregiving environment they receive through their temperament. We investigated transactional relations between maternal non-supportive responses to child worry (mother-reported) and two differently-measured child inhibited temperament indices (i.e., mother-perceived child inhibition to novelty, laboratory-observed child dysregulated fear) in a sample of 136 predominantly non-Hispanic, White mother-toddler dyads. Worry socialization and mother-reported inhibition to novelty were measured at each of three time points (toddler age 2, 3, 4 years), and dysregulated fear was measured at ages 2 and 3. Constructs showed stability across time, with effect sizes ranging from medium to large. Child inhibited temperament measures positively correlated within time point at ages 2 and 3, and laboratory-observed child dysregulated fear predicted mothers' later perceptions of their children's inhibition to novelty. At toddler age 2, mothers of children showing more dysregulated fear reported responding more non-supportively to worry. However, when controlling for one another, more mother-perceived child inhibition to novelty and less laboratory-observed child dysregulated fear at age 3 predicted mothers' greater non-supportive worry responses at child age 4. There was an indirect effect across time, such that children's greater laboratory-observed dysregulated fear predicted their mothers' heightened perceptions of inhibited temperament, which in turn predicted mothers' greater non-supportive worry responses. Findings lend support to anxiety-relevant construct stability in toddlerhood, as well as child-elicited, rather than parent-elicited, associations across time.

Longitudinal Links among Mother and Child Emotion Regulation, Maternal Emotion Socialization, and Child Anxiety.

Models of transdiagnostic family emotion processes recognize parents' emotion-related characteristics and behaviors as key contributors to child emotional development and psychological functioning. One such psychological outcome, child anxiety, is prevalent and early emerging, underscoring the importance of identifying early family- and emotion-related mechanisms involved in anxiety risk. We investigated the extent to which mother and child emotion-related traits and behaviors related to child anxiety in a community sample of 175 mother-child dyads. Using three time-points (child ages 2-4 years, assessments 1 year apart), we examined how mothers' emotion dysregulation predicted their emotion socialization practices (either supportive or non-supportive) and children's emotion regulation (ER; either attention- or caregiver-focused) over time, in relation to later child anxiety. Models controlled for child inhibited temperament and also tested the role of maternal anxiety in these trajectories. Mothers reported on their emotion dysregulation, emotion socialization, and their own and their child's anxiety, whereas child ER and inhibited temperament were measured using laboratory observation. In supportive emotion socialization models, maternal emotion dysregulation predicted child anxiety 2 years later. An indirect effect emerged, such that greater maternal emotion dysregulation predicted greater non-supportive emotion socialization, which in turn related to children's greater caregiver-focused ER. Maternal emotion dysregulation, maternal anxiety, and child inhibited temperament each predicted child anxiety above and beyond other variables, although their shared variance likely accounted for some of the results. Findings lend partial support to current theoretical models of transdiagnostic family emotion processes and child anxiety development, suggesting promising avenues of future research.

Maternal Anxiety and Toddler Inhibited Temperament Predict Maternal Socialization of Worry.

Parent emotion socialization refers to the process by which parents impart their values and beliefs about emotion expressivity to their children. Parent emotion socialization requires attention as a construct that develops in its own right. The socialization of child worry, in particular, has implications for children's typical socioemotional development, as well as their maladaptive development towards anxiety outcomes. Existing theories on emotion socialization, anxiety, and parent-child relationships guided our investigation of both maternal anxiety and toddler inhibited temperament as predictors of change in mothers' unsupportive (i.e., distress, punitive, and minimizing) responses to toddler worry across 1 year of toddlerhood. Participants included 139 mother-toddler dyads. Mothers reported on their own anxiety and their emotion socialization responses to toddler worry. We assessed toddler inhibited temperament through a mother-report survey of shyness and observational coding of dysregulated fear. Maternal anxiety but not child inhibited temperament predicted distress reactions and punitive responses, whereas maternal anxiety and toddler dysregulated fear both uniquely predicted minimizing responses. These results support continued investigation of worry socialization as a developmental outcome of both parent and child characteristics.

Maternal comforting behavior, toddlers' dysregulated fear, and toddlers' emotion regulatory behaviors.

Developmental theories of emotion regulation suggest that influences from both extrinsic (e.g., from caregivers) and intrinsic (i.e., temperament) sources contribute to children's displays of emotion regulatory behaviors. Very few studies have examined specific caregiver behaviors in relation to specific regulatory behaviors. Further, few empirical investigations have tested theoretical notions that temperament may be an important context in which to understand the nature of the relation between caregiver behavior and toddlers' regulatory behaviors. The current study examined the specific maternal behavior of physical comfort in relation to three regulatory strategies exhibited by toddlers (attention-shifting, caregiver-focused behavior, and self-focused behavior) in 117 pairs of mothers and their 24-month-old toddlers. Further, we tested the temperament dimension of dysregulated fear, a more recent derivation of behavioral inhibition, both in relation to regulatory efforts and as a moderator of relations between maternal comforting and toddler regulatory behaviors. Dysregulated fear related directly and positively to attention-shifting, and it moderated the relation between maternal comforting and both caregiver-focused and self-focused behaviors. This study provides new evidence of the importance of both extrinsic and intrinsic correlates of emotion regulation in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).