Children's Socioemotional Functioning Research Articles

Prenatal buds of conditional regard and autonomy support: Associations with postnatal parenting and child adjustment.

Toddlerhood is a period where issues of autonomy and control in parent-child relationships become particularly intense. In response to these challenges, some parents adopt controlling practices, whereas others are more autonomy supportive. However, research has yet to examine prenatal orientations that foreshadow specific controlling or autonomy-supportive parental practices in toddlerhood and children's socioemotional functioning. In particular, literature on early childhood socialization lacks sufficient evidence on the effects of the controversial controlling practice of parental conditional positive regard. To increase our knowledge on these issues, we examined reports provided by Israeli Jewish mothers during their first pregnancy (N = 294), at 18-month postpartum (N = 226), and when the child was 42 months old (N = 134). To control for child temperament, both parents reported 8-month postpartum (N = 235) on infant temperament dispositions, which may act as precursors of later socioemotional functioning. Structural equations modeling revealed that a general prenatal maternal orientation to use conditional regard as a socialization practice predicted mothers' use of the specific practices of conditional positive and negative regard with toddlers, which then predicted internalizing problems when children reached the age of 42 months. Additionally, a general prenatal orientation toward autonomy-supportive parenting predicted mothers' perspective taking with toddlers, which then predicted children's prosocial behavior at 42 months. The effects emerged also after controlling for infants' temperamental dispositions toward negative emotionality and positive affect. Findings underlie the potential role of prenatal orientations toward conditional regard and autonomy support that, when later transform into specific early parenting practices, may serve as early markers of child socioemotional adjustment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Shyness and Socio-Emotional Adjustment among Young Chinese Children: The Moderating Role of Screen Time.

The primary aim of the present study was to examine the potential moderating role of screen time in the links between shyness and indices of socio-emotional adjustment in young Chinese children. Participants were N = 211 children (112 boys, 99 girls) ages 43-66 months (M = 58.84 months, SD = 5.32) recruited from two public kindergartens in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Mothers completed assessments of children's shyness and screen time, and both mothers and teachers completed measures of indices of children's socio-emotional functioning (prosocial, internalizing problems, learning problems). Among the results, shyness was positively associated with internalizing problems and negatively associated with prosocial behavior, whereas screen time was positively associated with internalizing problems. However, several significant shyness × screen time interaction effects were observed. The pattern of these results consistently revealed that at higher levels of screen time, links between shyness and indices of socio-emotional difficulties were exacerbated. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of shyness and screen time in early childhood.

The role of early social play behaviors and language skills for shy children's later internalizing difficulties in school.

Research has demonstrated links from early childhood shyness to socioemotional problems later in life. This longitudinal study explored the role of early social play behaviors and language skills in the associations between childhood shyness and later internalizing and language difficulties in school. Participants were N = 7,447 children (50.1% girls) from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Latent direct, indirect, and interaction path analyses were performed within a structural equation framework. Results showed that mother-rated childhood shyness from age 18 months to age five years was associated with mother-rated internalizing difficulties and language problems at age eight years. Lower levels of teacher-reported social play behaviors and poorer language skills in preschool increased the risk of later anxiety problems among shy children, whereas higher levels of language competencies and social play behaviors buffered against later anxiety problems. The study identifies some of the early risk and protective factors that may influence shy children's socio-emotional functioning and adjustment.

Classroom chaos and program quality in early child care and education programs: A study from Turkey

This study aimed to better understand the construct of classroom chaos in relation to child care program quality and examine its association with child externalizing problems and social competence. Towards this end, two studies were conducted at child care programs in Turkey. Study 1 was qualitiative and relied on eight focus group interviews with 24 Turkish teachers to gain a deeper understanding of what is meant by quality and chaos. Study 2 included 49 teachers and 251 preschoolers as participants to investigate the concurrent relations of classroom chaos and quality with children's socioemotional functioning. Results of multilevel linear modeling analyses revealed that teachers’ increased perception of classroom chaos was associated with higher levels of externalizing problems and lower levels of social competence in children, even after controlling for program quality, child age, gender, and temperamental effortful control. Teacher-rated classroom chaos was also associated with mother-reported externalizing problems. On average, program quality was rated as minimal and showed no significant relations with externalizing problems and social competence. The implications of these findings were discussed with respect to the intervention targets in early child care and education programs.

Trajectory of quality of mother‐child interactions: Prospective links with child socioemotional functioning

AbstractResearch shows that the quality of mother‐child interactions is a robust antecedent of child socioemotional functioning. Yet, relatively little is known about the evolution of this relational quality over time, and even less about how changes in relational quality may bear on child adjustment. This study aimed to describe the trajectory of quality of mother‐child interactions between ages 2 and 7 and to investigate associations between individual differences in this trajectory and child socioemotional functioning at age 8. In a sample of 233 mother‐child dyads primarily comprised of White French‐Canadian mothers, the quality of interactions was assessed during 10‐min play sequences when children were aged 2, 4, and 7 years. Child internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors were reported by a subsample of 171 teachers at age 8. The results showed that on average, quality of mother‐child interactions decreased over time. In terms of individual differences, children who experienced a slower decrease in the quality of interactions with their mother from 2 to 7 years showed less internalizing behavior at age 8, over and above initial quality at 2 years. Children involved in higher quality interactions with their mother at 2 years showed more prosocial and less externalizing behavior at age 8, independent of the subsequent decrease in the quality of those interactions. The findings suggest that initial levels and subsequent changes in the quality of mother‐child interactions are two distinct indicators of their relationship with potentially different implications for child adjustment.

The beneficial role of family enmeshment among South Korean immigrants in the United States.

Enmeshment is considered inimical to healthy family dynamics among European Americans. However, recent studies have failed to show negative associations between family enmeshment and individual outcomes among Asian Heritage families. Using structural equation modelling and multiple group analysis, this study examined whether enmeshed relationships are dysfunctional in Korean immigrant families in the United States and whether degree of acculturation moderated the associations between enmeshment and children's socioemotional functioning and academic performance. The sample consisted of 98 South Korean immigrant families with children between 9 and 14 years of age residing in the Greater New York City Area. Results showed that enmeshed family relationships tended to be beneficial to child socioemotional functioning and the association became more evident with lower than higher degree of acculturation. Findings are discussed in terms of the meaning of enmeshment when working with Korean immigrant families in the United States.

Disorganized attachment behaviors in infancy as predictors of brain morphology and peer rejection in late childhood.

Studies show robust links between disorganized attachment in infancy and socioemotional maladjustment in childhood. Little is known, however, about the links between disorganized attachment and brain development, and whether attachment-related differences in brain morphology translate into meaningful variations in child socioemotional functioning. This study examined the links between infants' disorganized attachment behaviors toward their mothers, whole-brain regional grey matter volume and thickness, and peer rejection in late childhood. Thirty-three children and their mothers took part in this study. The Strange Situation Procedure was used to assess mother-infant attachment when infants were 18 months old. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed when they were 10 years old to assess cortical thickness and grey matter volumes. Children and teachers reported on peer rejection 1 year later, as an indicator of socioemotional maladjustment. Results indicated that disorganized attachment was not associated with grey matter volumes. However, children who exhibited more disorganized attachment behaviors in infancy had significantly thicker cortices in bilateral middle and superior frontal gyri, and extending to theinferior frontal gyrus, as well as the orbitofrontal and insular cortices in the right hemisphere in late childhood. Moreover, children with thicker cortices in these regions experienced greater peer rejection, as rated by themselves and their teachers. Although preliminary, these results are the first to indicate that disorganized attachment may play a role in cortical thickness development and that changes in cortical thickness are associated with differences in child socioemotional functioning.

Sensory processing sensitivity behavior moderates the association between environmental harshness, unpredictability, and child socioemotional functioning.

Building on Ellis et al.'s theorization for potent dimensions of environmental adversity, the present work sought to evaluate how environmental harshness and unpredictability might function directly and in interaction with child sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) to shape the development of child socioemotional functioning. Participants were 235 young children (Mage = 2.97 at the first measurement occasion) and their parents, who were followed for two consecutive annual measurement occasions. Child SPS was measured through behavioral observation across multiple tasks within the laboratory setting. Greater environmental unpredictability was significantly associated with the development of children's externalizing problems over a year only for children with high SPS. Follow-up analyses indicated that the unpredictability-x-SPS interaction was consistent with differential susceptibility, such that high SPS children showed greater increases in externalizing problems under high unpredictability, but also lower increases/greater decreases in externalizing problems under low unpredictability. Such association did not apply to children with low SPS.

Maternal Emotional Reminiscing, Child Autobiographical Memory, and Their Associations with Pre-Schoolers’ Socioemotional Functioning

ABSTRACT This study aimed to explore the possible indirect pathway between maternal reminiscing style and child socioemotional functioning (prosocial behaviors and emotional adjustment difficulties) through children’s autobiographical memory (elaboration and specificity). A secondary exploratory aim was to examine whether cultural context moderated these indirect effects. Participants included 94 mother-child dyads drawn from middle- and high-income families in China and Australia. The dyads completed measures of child memory specificity, maternal report of child socioemotional functioning, and a shared emotional reminiscing task that assessed child memory elaboration and maternal sensitive guidance. Path analysis results indicated an indirect effect of maternal supportive reminiscing via child memory elaboration (but not memory specificity) on children’s prosocial behaviors, regardless of the cultural group. However, there was no evidence to suggest an indirect pathway between maternal supportive reminiscing and child adjustment difficulties (or prosocial behaviors) through child memory specificity in either cultural context. These findings provide preliminary support to the recent conceptualization of an indirect pathway between maternal sensitive guidance during emotional reminiscing and children’s prosocial behaviors through child memory elaboration. However, it is important to note that the cross-sectional design limits the causal inferences that can be drawn from the findings. The implications for memory specificity in child socioemotional functioning were less clear and indicated a need for further research in this area.

Effects of the Parental Friendship Coaching Intervention on Parental Emotion Socialization of Children with ADHD.

Parental emotion-related socialization behaviors shape children's socioemotional functioning and appear important for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Parental Friendship Coaching (PFC) intervention teaches parents to coach their children with ADHD in friendship skills, which includes managing emotions. We examined whether PFC, relative to psychoeducation and social support (Coping with ADHD through Relationships and Education; CARE), improved parental emotion-related socialization behaviors, child affect with a friend, and child social behaviors related to emotional difficulties. Participants were 172 families of children with ADHD (ages 6-11, 30% female), randomized to PFC or CARE. At baseline, children and their real-life friends interacted and their affect was coded. Parents coached their child in friendship skills before and after the child-friend interaction, and parents' praise, warmth, criticism, and discussion of emotion-related friendship strategies were coded. Parents and teachers reported children's withdrawn/depressed and aggressive behaviors. Results suggested that PFC (relative to CARE) led to parents providing more emotion strategies and praise at post-treatment and follow-up, and more warmth at follow-up, and to children showing less withdrawn/depressed behavior at follow-up. For bidirectional relationships from baseline to post-treatment, more parental warmth was associated with less child withdrawn/depressed behavior, and more parental criticism with more child aggression. More child withdrawn/depressed behavior and positive affect at post-treatment were associated with more parental criticism at follow-up. After corrections for multiple comparisons, only PFC effects on praise and emotion strategies at post-treatment, and praise and withdrawn/depressed behavior at follow-up, maintained. Implications are discussed for supporting socioemotional functioning in children with ADHD.

Further evidence for the multidimensional nature of maternal sensitivity: differential links with child socioemotional functioning at preschool age.

There has been increasing scholarly attention to the study of maternal sensitivity as a multidimensional construct. This report investigated the predictive value of three dimensions of sensitivity during mother-infant interactions in an effort to gain greater understanding of how specific facets of sensitivity relate to child socioemotional outcomes. Maternal cooperation/attunement (accurate interpretation of infant cues and capacity to adjust the interaction correspondingly), positivity (positive attitude toward the infant), and accessibility/availability (consistent attentiveness) were assessed observationally in 195 mothers of 1-year-old infants. Child socioemotional functioning was assessed using behavioral tasks and maternal and teacher reports when children were 4years of age. The results revealed that maternal accessibility/availability was predictive of less externalizing behavior, more prosocial behavior (mother- and teacher-reported), and better theory of mind, while maternal positivity predicted effortful control. These results highlight the advantages of a multidimensional assessment in understanding how sensitivity predicts different developmental outcomes.

Global perspectives on physical and nonphysical discipline: A Bayesian multilevel analysis

Background and Objective: Sixty countries worldwide have banned the use of physical punishment, yet little is known about the association of physical and nonphysical forms of child discipline with child development in a global context. The objective of this study is to examine whether physical punishment and nonphysical discipline are associated with child socioemotional functioning in a global sample of families from 62 countries and whether country-level normativeness of physical punishment and nonphysical discipline moderated those associations. Methods: Data for this study are from 215,885 families in the fourth and fifth rounds of the United Nations Children’s Fund Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. Bayesian multilevel logistic models were used to analyze the associations of physical punishment and nonphysical discipline (i.e., taking away privileges and verbal reasoning) with three different outcomes representing children’s socioemotional functioning: getting along well with other children, aggression, and becoming distracted. Results: The use of physical punishment was not associated with getting along with other children, was associated with increased aggression, and was associated with increases in distraction. Taking away privileges was associated with lower levels of getting along with other children, higher levels of aggression, and higher levels of becoming distracted. Verbal reasoning (i.e., explaining why a behavior was wrong) was associated with higher levels of getting along with other children, higher levels of aggression, and higher levels of becoming distracted. Country-level normativeness moderated some of these associations but in general the direction of effects was consistent. Conclusions: Results suggest that eliminating physical punishment would benefit children across the globe and align with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for all children to be free from physical violence. More attention needs to be focused on the associations of nonphysical forms of discipline with child functioning across the globe.

Interparental Relationship Quality During Pregnancy: Implications for Early Parent-Infant Bonding and Infant Socioemotional Development.

Research demonstrates the central role of mother-child relationships in child socioemotional development; however, families are complex systems and the unique roles of multiple family subsystems in early infant development have received less attention. In the present study, we investigated the role of multiple family relationships (interparental, mother-infant, father-infant), during pregnancy and the first month after childbirth, in infant socioemotional functioning at 6months. We administered semi-structured interviews during pregnancy to assess multiple qualities of the interparental relationship. At 1month postpartum, parents completed reports about their feelings and attitudes toward their infant to assess impaired bonding. At 6months, parents provided reports of child socioemotional functioning. Both mother-infant and father-infant impaired bonding were uniquely associated with infant socioemotional impairment, controlling for prenatal interparental relationship quality. Additionally, multiple dimensions of the interparental relationship (i.e., poor-quality conflict management, inadequate support for fathers, and low levels of respect toward mothers) were associated with infant socioemotional impairment controlling for parent-infant bonding. Results also demonstrated an indirect pathway, such that poor sexual quality during pregnancy was associated with fathers (but not mothers) reporting more impaired bonding with their infants, which was linked to greater infant socioemotional impairment. Results highlight the importance of understanding the broad family environment, prior to and immediately following the birth of the child, to identify at-risk children at the earliest possible stages of intervention.

Findings, issues, and new directions for research on emotion socialization.

This special issue consists of 20 articles that focus on issues related to Eisenberg and colleagues' (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Cumberland, 1998) model of emotion socialization processes and its relevance for understanding a range of aspects of children's socioemotional functioning. The various papers have addressed a variety of issues including key mediating pathways, predictions of emotion-related socialization behaviors, moderators of pathways, and various potential outcomes of emotion-related socialization behaviors. Methods used in the articles include experimental interventions and nonexperimental longitudinal studies. The goals for this commentary include organizing the findings in this special issue to better highlight their relevance for the 1998 heuristic model and suggesting issues to consider in future research. Moreover, some gaps in the literature are noted. Finally, several minor changes to the model are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

When neighborhoods matter: Developmental timing and youth reading achievement and problem behaviors

Consistent evidence links neighborhood socioeconomic status with children's development outcomes. However, it is less clear precisely whether or when neighborhoods are most strongly associated with children's socioemotional functioning and achievement. Couched in bioecological and developmental theory, this study tests two models of neighborhood effects: childhood and adolescent exposure. We used the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, a longitudinal, multi-cohort study of children in Chicago in the 1990s and 2000s. We examined two cohorts of children, early childhood and adolescence, to compare the relative associations between neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage, as measured by U.S. Census data. We conducted multilevel latent growth models (MLGMs), investigating children's initial status and growth in reading, internalizing and externalizing behaviors across the three developmental periods by neighborhood characteristics, controlling for a rich set of child- and family-level covariates. Results provided some support for the childhood and adolescent exposure models, but not precisely as hypothesized.

Stress physiology and memory for emotional information: Moderation by individual differences in pubertal hormones.

In contrast to a large body of work concerning the effects of physiological stress reactivity on children's socioemotional functioning, far less attention has been devoted to understanding the effects of such reactivity on cognitive, including mnemonic, functioning. How well children learn and remember information under stress has implications for a range of educational, clinical, and legal outcomes. We evaluated 8-14 year olds' (N = 94, 50 female) memory for negative, neutral, and positive images. Youth had seen the images a week previously as a part of a laboratory stress task. At encoding and retrieval, and in between, youth provided saliva samples that were later assayed for cortisol, salivary α amylase (sAA), testosterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Overall, higher cortisol reactivity to the lab task predicted enhanced memory for emotional but not neutral images. However, cortisol further interacted with pubertal hormones (testosterone and DHEA) to predict memory. Among girls with lower pubertal hormone levels, greater cortisol reactivity was associated with enhanced memory for negative information, whereas among boys with higher pubertal hormone levels, cortisol reactivity was associated with enhanced memory for positive information. sAA, was unrelated to memory. Overall, our findings reveal that individual differences in hormone levels associated with pubertal development have implications for our understanding of how stress-responsive biological systems directly and interactively influence cognitive outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record

Maternal employment and children's socio-emotional outcomes: an Australian longitudinal study.

Among children, poor socio-emotional functioning leads to poor health and well-being during childhood and later in life, and so understanding its social determinants is important. This study's objective is to examine how maternal employment influences children's socio-emotional outcomes in an Australian sample of families with two biological parents, testing the mediating role of maternal mental health, parenting practices, and parental income. We analyze six waves of panel data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 7524 children, 29,701 observations) using random-effect models. Children of employed mothers display better socio-emotional outcomes than children of non-employed mothers, though the effect magnitude is only moderate. Associations are stronger for internalizing than externalizing problems, and not mediated by parental mental health, parenting practices, or household income. Our findings can inform sociopolitical debates on the social value of maternal labor force participation and its impacts on children. They suggest that incentivizing maternal employment should bear no detrimental consequences on their children's socio-emotional functioning. The different associations found for children's internalizing and externalizing problems stress the value of distinguishing these constructs.

Distress Responses in a Routine Vaccination Context: Relationships to Early Childhood Mental Health.

Social and emotional competencies, such as distress regulation, are established in early childhood and are critical for the development of children’s mental health and wellbeing. Routine vaccinations in primary care provide a unique opportunity to relate responses to a universal, relatively standardized, distress regulation paradigm (i.e., pain-related distress) to key developmental outcomes. The current study sought to examine distress regulation during routine vaccination in infancy and preschool as predictors of outcomes related to socioemotional competence in preschool. It was hypothesized that children with poorer distress regulation abilities post-vaccination would have lower socioemotional development. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that insensitive parenting would exacerbate this relationship for children with poor distress regulation abilities. As part of an ongoing longitudinal cohort, 172 parent–child dyads were videotaped during vaccinations in infancy and preschool, and subsequently participated in a full-day psychological assessment in a university lab. Videotapes were coded for child pre-needle distress (baseline distress), immediate post-needle pain-related distress reactivity (immediate distress reactivity), and pain-related distress regulation (distress regulation). Parent sensitivity during the preschool vaccination was also coded. Baseline distress prior to vaccination predicted greater externalizing problems and behavioral symptoms. Parent sensitivity did not moderate the association between any child distress behaviors and socioemotional development indicators. Child distress behaviors prior to injection, regardless of parent behavior, during the vaccination context may provide valuable information to health care professionals about child socioemotional functioning in the behavioral and emotional domains.

Foster parents' emotional investment and their young foster children's socio-emotional functioning

Emotional investment may be defined as a willingness to accept and become committed to a child, and being aware of influencing the child's development. Research in this field is limited, and has shown that commitment in particular is associated with foster children's socio-emotional functioning. Our aim was therefore to investigate 60 foster parents' acceptance, commitment and awareness of influence to their early placed foster children at 2 years, as well as to investigate the association between these three concepts and the foster children's social-emotional functioning (externalizing, internalizing, dysregulation and competence) at 2 (T1) and 3 (T2) years of age. The caregivers were interviewed with “This is My Baby”, and completed the questionnaire “Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment”. Results showed that on average the foster parents were rated quite high on emotional investment. Linear regressions, including one predictor and one outcome variable, revealed associations between emotional investment and foster children's socio-emotional functioning. Moreover, in regressions including all three predictors, commitment significantly negatively predicted externalizing behavior in the foster children at T1, while acceptance significantly negatively predicted dysregulation at T2. Lastly, among others for externalizing, the coefficient of commitment was significantly higher at T1 than at T2. Our results indicate a possible short-term influence of commitment on externalizing- and a possible long-term influence of acceptance on dysregulation behavior in foster children. We will therefore highlight the clinical importance of emotional investment in foster care, in order to help the young foster child towards a healthy social-emotional functioning.

Assessment and implications of social withdrawal in early childhood: A first look at social avoidance

AbstractThe goals of the present research were to: (a) develop and provide preliminary validation of a parent‐rated measure of social avoidance in early childhood; and (b) to evaluate a conceptual model of the direct and indirect links among young children's social withdrawal (shyness, unsociability, social avoidance), peer problems, and indices of internalizing problems (social anxiety, depression). Participants were N = 564 children (272 boys, 292 girls; Mage = 67.29 mos, SD = 11.70) attending kindergarten and Grade 1 classes in public schools in southeastern Ontario, Canada. A new subscale assessing social avoidance was added to an existing parent‐rated measure of children's social withdrawal. Indices of children's socioemotional functioning were provided by parents and teachers. Among the results, the revised measure of multiple forms of social withdrawal demonstrated good psychometric properties, moderate stability 16 months later, and evidence of validity. Shyness, unsociability, and social avoidance also displayed differential patterns of associations with indices of children's socioemotional functioning. Results are discussed in terms of the assessment and implications of different forms of social withdrawal in early childhood.