Abstract
Parents play a critical role in supporting infants’ ability to manage strong emotions. Routine vaccinations provide an ideal context to observe the effect of parents’ behaviors on infants’ pain-related distress. Previous research in the vaccination context showed that parent sensitivity, operationalized by variables such as emotional availability and proximal soothing behaviors, is associated with infant pain-related distress behavior. However, the magnitudes of these relationships were smaller than expected given the established importance of parents in the development of distress regulation. In recent work, a reliable and valid measure to operationalize insensitive behaviors was developed. The objective of the current study was to examine the relative contribution of variables representing sensitive and insensitive behaviors to the prediction of infant pain-related distress behaviors during the reactivity and regulation phases of needle pain. Archival data was used to analyze a subsample of infants followed during their two-month, six-month, and 12-month vaccinations (n = 81). Results of regression analyses indicated that parent insensitive behaviors generally had the strongest relationships with pain outcomes across all ages, with a greater influence on regulation-phase pain-related distress behavior, rather than reactivity-phase pain-related distress behavior. Our findings support the utility of a measure of distress-promoting parent behaviors in a vaccination context, and highlight the potential value of this measure for clinicians and researchers.
Highlights
Emotion regulation, defined as one’s ability to select and enact appropriate strategies in the management of extreme emotions [1], underlies adaptive socioemotional development [2]
A total of six regression analyses were conducted in order to predict infant pain behaviors during the reactivity and regulation phases at two months, six months, and 12 months
The relative contributions of each of these variables in the prediction of infant pain outcomes were not examined to date
Summary
Emotion regulation, defined as one’s ability to select and enact appropriate strategies in the management of extreme emotions [1], underlies adaptive socioemotional development [2]. Difficulties with this skill, and with the regulation of negative emotions, (i.e., distress regulation) were conceptualized as a transdiagnostic challenge underlying a significant proportion of mental health problems across the lifespan [3]. During the first year of life [4], before children begin developing self-directed regulation strategies, parents and caregivers play a critical role in scaffolding this skill by modeling adaptive emotional responses to distress [5], and by providing external regulation strategies to support infants’ distress regulation [4,5]. Basic forms of emotion regulation can be operationalized in terms of behavioral and physiological regulation
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