Children's Emotion Regulation Abilities Research Articles

Parent Facilitation of Child Emotion Regulation in ASD: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Parents play a substantial role in their children's emotion regulation (ER) abilities. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulties regulating their emotions, which can manifest as externalizing behavioral issues. Parents of children with ASD facilitate their children's ER development in response to unique challenges and stressors, often developing resiliency but other times contributing to their children's dysregulation and behavioral challenges. It is unclear how much momentary stress attenuates parents' emotional facilitation of child ER and its effect on child behavioral functioning. Using an ecological momentary assessment approach, the current study explores this process by considering how parents of children with ASD facilitate child ER through (1) parent ER ability, (2) emotion socialization style, and (3) expressed emotion. Multilevel models explored the relative influences of parent ER facilitation on the association between momentary parent stress and behavioral intensity. Results suggest that parent ER abilities and specific emotion socialization styles interact with momentary parent stress and child behavior, whereas emotional climate of the home impacts child behavior more directly. The role of parent ER facilitation in the context of parent stress and children with ASD and behavioral problems is complex and multifaceted. Implications for further supporting children's emotional development via parent involvement are discussed.

어머니의 양육태도와 유아의 정서조절능력이 유아의 문제행동에 미치는 영향

Objectives In this study, we aimed to examine how maternal parenting attitudes and young children's emotion regulation abilities influence problem behaviors in young children.
 Methods For the study, 291 young children aged 3-5 years old and 291 mothers enrolled in a daycare center located in G city were surveyed from December 12, 2022 to January 8, 2023. A questionnaire survey was conducted on attitude, emotional regulation ability of young children, and problem behaviors of young children. For the collected data, Pearson's correlation analysis was performed to analyze the correlation between each variable using the SPSS 21.0 program, and multiple regression analysis was performed to analyze the effect relationship of the variables.
 Results The analysis results are as follows. Firstly, it was found that the mother's parenting attitude and the young children's emotional regulation ability were correlated with the young children's problem behavior. Secondly, in the relative explanatory power of independent variables that affect young children's intrinsic problem behaviors, negative emotional expression, affectionate, controlling, and rejecting influences in the order shown. In the relative explanatory power of independent variables that affect extrinsic problem behaviors of young children, affectionate, negative emotional expression, controlling, and positive emotional expression were found to have an effect in the order.
 Conclusions This study provides valuable information on the variables affecting young children's problem behaviors, such as maternal parenting attitudes and young children's emotion regulation abilities. It can serve as foundational data to enhance maternal parenting attitudes and young children's emotion regulation abilities, which, in turn, may help improve young children's problem behaviors.

Parent-partner and parent-child attachment: Links to children's emotion regulation

We investigate the interconnections between couple and parenting relationships and young children's emotion regulation across time. Our goals were to: (1) examine whether mothers' and fathers' attachment security towards their romantic partners relates to mothers- and fathers-child attachment quality; (2) investigate the bidirectional relations between mother- and father-child attachment quality, and children's emotion regulation. We followed 206 children (95 girls, Mage = 4.01 years, SD = 0.57), their mothers, and fathers over 3-time points during the preschool period. Parents reported attachment security towards their romantic partner and the quality of their attachment relationships with the child. Teachers reported children's emotion regulation. Results from a dyadic cross-lagged panel model indicated a consistent negative association between mothers' and fathers' insecure attachment and parents-child attachment quality. Despite some variations according to children's sex and age, overall, findings suggest that a higher father- and mother-child attachment quality links to children's higher emotion regulation abilities.

Family experiences of ambiguous loss during COVID‐19

AbstractObjectiveThe present study provides descriptive results on parents' mental health, ambiguous loss, stress, and parent–child relationship as well as child stress and children's emotion regulation abilities. Additionally, we present initial psychometric results and preliminary regression findings from a quantitative ambiguous loss measure.BackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic has led to more than one million deaths in the United States and subsequent mental health difficulties for parents and children.MethodData were collected from 134 participants (MParentAge = 39.1 years; 54.5% women; MChildAge = 9.4 years) in early May 2021. Analyses examined group differences of longitudinal findings over a year‐long period, parents' gender, and financial needs.ResultsModerate levels of COVID‐19–specific stress as well as general stress in both parents and children were found. Women reported higher levels of closeness among the parent–child dyad, and parents whose financial needs were not met reported significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression. A liner regression indicated that 44.3% of the variance in ambiguous loss can be explained by COVID‐19 specific stress and depression.ConclusionIndividuals and families are still experiencing difficulties after the COVID‐19 pandemic, as seen through the descriptives presented. Additionally, ambiguous loss can be predicted by these experiences.ImplicationsLong‐term information about individual and family experiences after a year of the COVID‐19 pandemic highlights important experiences of generalized stress in both parents and children.

Do Improvements in Therapeutic Game-Based Skills Transfer to Real Life Improvements in Children's Emotion-Regulation Abilities and Mental Health? A Pilot Study That Offers Preliminary Validity of the REThink In-game Performance Scoring.

Therapeutic or serious games are considered innovative ways of delivering psychological interventions especially suited for children and adolescents, which can have a positive impact on mental health, while also being fun and easily accessible online. While most serious games for children and adolescents address specific issues, such as anxiety or depression, preventive measures received less attention. REThink is an online therapeutic game designed as a stand-alone prevention tool, aiming to increase resilience in healthy children and adolescents in a Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy framework (David et al., 2019). The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the validity of in-game performance measurements or scores as indicators of the game effectiveness in building real life emotion-regulation abilities. We analyzed how scores of different game levels (addressing different skills) are associated with improvements in mental health and emotion regulation abilities. Our preliminary results suggest that in-game performance at some levels (scores) consistently reflect improvements in psychological functioning, while in-game performance at other levels are less associated with changes in real life self-reported psychological functioning. These results offer important information about which levels can be used as preliminary indicators of psychological improvements, and which levels need to be revised in terms of task or scoring. Overall, results of our study offer preliminary validation of REThink's game scoring system, while also suggesting the elements to be refined.

Early adversity and children's emotion regulation: Differential roles of parent emotion regulation and adversity exposure.

Exposure to early life adversity (ELA) is associated with increased rates of psychopathology and poor physical health. The present study builds on foundational work by Megan Gunnar identifying how ELA results in poor long-term outcomes through alterations in the stress response system, leading to major disruptions in emotional and behavioral regulation. Specifically, the present study tested the direct effects of ELA against the role of parent socialization to shed light on the mechanisms by which ELA leads to emotion regulation deficits. Children ages 4-7 years (N = 64) completed interviews about their experiences of deprivation and threat, a fear conditioning and extinction paradigm, and an IQ test. Parents of the children completed questionnaires regarding their own emotion regulation difficulties and psychopathology, their children's emotion regulation, and child exposure to adversity. At the bivariate level, greater exposure to threat and parental difficulties with emotion regulation were associated with poorer emotion regulation in children, assessed both via parental report and physiologically. In models where parental difficulties with emotion regulation, threat, and deprivation were introduced simultaneously, regression results indicated that parental difficulties with emotion regulation, but not deprivation or threat, continued to predict children's emotion regulation abilities. These results suggest that parental socialization of emotion is a robust predictor of emotion regulation tendencies in children exposed to early adversity.

Parenting Stress During the COVID-19 Outbreak: Socioeconomic and Environmental Risk Factors and Implications for Children Emotion Regulation.

The COVID-19 outbreak imposed to Italian families many changes in their daily life increasing the risk of developing psychological problems. The present study explored risk factors associated with parenting stress and implications for children's emotion regulation in families with different socioeconomic risks. Parents of 2-14years old children completed a survey reporting difficulties experienced due to the lockdown, level of household chaos, parenting stress, parent involvement in the child's daily life, and children emotion regulation competences. The general mean levels of parenting stress and children emotion regulation abilities were not at clinical level compared with Italian norms. Household chaos predicted higher levels of parenting stress, which, in turn, was associated with less effective emotion regulation in children through the mediating role of parental involvement. More stressed parents were less involved in their children's activities, decreasing children's effective emotion regulation. Only for SES no-risk families, the lockdown constraints increased parenting stress. For SES at-risk families, the impact of parenting stress and involvement on children regulation strategies was stronger, with a protective role played by parental involvement on children's negativity not evident for SES no-risk families. Dealing with the lockdown is a stressful experience for parents who have to balance personal life, work, and children upbringing, without other help. This situation potentially impairs their ability to be supportive caregivers and is consequently detrimental for children well-being. Policies should take into consideration the implications of the lockdown for families' mental health and tailor supportive interventions according to family's risk factors.

Amygdala Functional Connectivity Is Associated With Emotion Regulation and Amygdala Reactivity in 4- to 6-Year-Olds

Emotion dysregulation has been suggested to be a potent risk factor for multiple psychiatric conditions. Altered amygdala-prefrontal cortex (PFC) connectivity has been consistently linked to emotion dysregulation. Recent data indicate that amygdala-PFC functional connectivity undergoes a prolonged period of development, with amygdala reactivity during early childhood potentially shaping this unfolding process. Little is known about the relationships between amygdala-PFC functional connectivity, amygdala reactivity, and emotion regulation during early childhood. This information is likely critical for understanding early emotion dysregulation as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. The current study examined the relationships between amygdala functional connectivity, amygdala reactivity, and emotion regulation in preschoolers. A total of 66 medication-naive 4- to 6-year-olds participated in a study where resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and parent-reported child emotion regulation ability data were collected. fMRI data collected during a face viewing task was also available for 24 children. Right amygdala-medial PFC (mPFC) functional connectivity was positively associated with child emotion regulation ability and negatively associated with child negative affect and right amygdala reactivity to facial expressions of emotion. Right amygdala-mPFC functional connectivity also statistically mediated the relationship between heightened right amygdala reactivity and elevated child negative affect. Study findings suggest that amygdala-mPFC functional connectivity during early childhood, and its relationships with amygdala reactivity and emotion regulation during this highly sensitive developmental period, may play an important role in early emotional development. These results inform the neurodevelopmental biology of emotion regulation and its potential relationship with risk for psychopathology.

The Puzzle of Emotion Regulation: Development and Evaluation of the Tangram Emotion Coding Manual for Children.

The ability to regulate one’s emotions is crucial to engaging successfully in social contexts. Difficulties in emotion regulation are seen in multiple psychiatric disorders, prompting an increased interest in the concept. Suitable methods for assessing emotion regulation, however, are lacking. In this study, we investigated the interrater and intrarater reliability, construct validity, and content validity of a new observational method for evaluating children’s emotion regulation abilities (a complex puzzle task) in a sample of 62 children without psychiatric disorders and 23 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) aged 7–12, using intra-class correlation coefficients for the reliability analyses and Spearman’s rank-order correlations for analyses of convergent and discriminant validity. A panel of experts examined the content validity of the test, and Mann–Whitney U-tests were used to investigate the ability of the test to differentiate the non-clinical group from the ADHD group. Results showed a high level of interrater and intrarater reliability of the test. There was mixed evidence for convergent and discriminant validity as expected due to the novelty and experimental nature of the test, making it difficult to compare with questionnaire-based measures. Content validity analysis was satisfactory, and the group comparison showed that the test differentiated the groups on the primary outcome measure. Overall, the measure demonstrated high feasibility and satisfactory psychometric properties. The generic nature of the test makes it suitable for use across psychiatric disorders and age groups with potential relevance in both research and clinical settings

Maternal Elaborative Language in Shared Emotion Talk with ODD Children: Relationship to Child Emotion Competencies.

While maternal elaborative reminiscing has been found to be positively connected to children's emotion competencies, little is known about how the quality of maternal talk during mother-child talk about shared emotion events relates to emotional competencies in children with disruptive behavioural disorders. In this study of 68 four to eight year-olds with oppositional defiant disorder and 34 children without a diagnosis there was no evidence of differences between mothers of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) children and mothers of non-ODD children in their use of emotion descriptors and open-ended questions when discussing emotion events with their child. After controlling for child age, gender, expressive verbal abilities and number of conversational turns, the more the mothers used these devices the poorer child's ability to generate causes for emotions and the lower the child's emotion regulation ability. The association for child emotion regulation was moderated by child's diagnostic status with a notable relationship for ODD mother-child dyads but not for the other group. The implications of the findings for the conceptualisation of mother-child talk and its relationship to the development of emotion competencies in children with disruptive behavioural problems are discussed.

Cumulative childhood trauma, emotion regulation, dissociation, and behavior problems in school-aged sexual abuse victims

BackgroundChild sexual abuse is associated with a plethora of devastating repercussions. A significant number of sexually abused children are likely to experience other forms of maltreatment that can seriously affect their emotion regulation abilities and impede on their development. The aim of the study was to test emotion regulation and dissociation as mediators in the association between cumulative childhood trauma and internalized and externalized behavior problems in child victims of sexual abuse. MethodsParticipants were 309 sexually abused children (203 girls and 106 boys; Mean age = 9.07) and their non-offending parent. Medical and clinical files were coded for cumulative childhood trauma. At initial evaluation (T1), parents completed measures assessing children's emotion regulation abilities and dissociation. At Time 2 (T2), parents completed a measure assessing children's behavior problems. Mediation analyses were conducted with emotion regulation and dissociation as sequential mediators using Mplus software. ResultsFindings revealed that cumulative childhood trauma affects both internalized and externalized behavior problems through three mediation paths: emotion regulation alone, dissociation alone, and through a path combining emotion regulation and dissociation. LimitationsBoth emotion regulation and dissociation were assessed at T1 and thus the temporal sequencing of mediators remains to be ascertained through a longitudinal design. All measures were completed by the parents. ConclusionsClinicians should routinely screen for other childhood trauma in vulnerable clienteles. In order to tackle behavior problems, clinical interventions for sexually abused youth need to address emotion regulation competencies and dissociation.

A longitudinal study of emotion regulation among sexually abused preschoolers

The aim of the present study was to investigate the evolution of emotion regulation competencies in sexually abused preschoolers. Children's emotion regulation abilities and their emotional lability and negativity were assessed shortly after disclosure of sexual abuse and one year later, and compared to those of non-abused children. A sample of 47 sexually abused (37 girls, 10 boys) and 74 non-abused children (54 girls, 20 boys), aged 3–7 years (M=56.83months; SD=9.55), participated in the study. Parents and daycare educators or teachers completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) and an adapted version of the History of Victimization Form (Parent & Hébert, 2006). Parents reported more emotional lability/negativity in sexually abused children, with an increase of difficulties and a larger difference between groups at follow-up assessment conducted one year later. Parents of sexually abused children, especially those of boys, also reported lower emotion regulation competencies in their child than parents from the comparison group. According to educators, victims of sexual abuse had lower emotion regulation abilities, but their lability/negativity tended to subside over time. Various hypotheses are proposed to explain the differences between sexually abused boys’ and girls’ emotion regulation competencies, and between the two informants. Clinical implications are also discussed. Emotion regulation seems to be an important dimension to consider in future interventions for this specific population.

Emotion Regulation in At‐Risk Preschoolers: Longitudinal Associations and Influences of Maternal Histories of Risk

Emotion regulation is a key challenge of early childhood. The present study examined emotion regulation behaviour longitudinally from infancy to preschool. The continuity of emotion regulation was explored within the larger ecological context of maternal childhood histories of aggression and social withdrawal and maternal use of constructive and non‐constructive behaviours. Forty‐five mothers with childhood histories of aggression or social withdrawal from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal, intergenerational study, participated with their preschool children. Infants' emotion regulation behaviour was observed during interactions with their mothers when they were 5½ months of age. Emotion regulation in these same children as preschoolers was coded during an interference task using the Preschooler Self‐Regulatory Scheme. Longitudinal findings demonstrated continuity in children's use of emotion regulation behaviours from infancy to preschool. Higher maternal childhood histories of risk, specifically social withdrawal, contributed to the prediction of preschoolers' increased attention‐seeking behaviours. Mothers' use of non‐constructive verbalizations predicted more maladaptive styles of emotion regulation in their preschoolers. The findings highlight the importance of helping children develop adaptive emotion regulation skills from a young age and have implications for the design of preventive intervention programmes to help parents foster children's emotion regulation abilities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: The Role of Parent Emotion Socialization and Children's Emotion Regulation Abilities

AbstractExposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is a traumatic life event. Almost 50 percent of IPV‐exposed children show subsequent post‐traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and they are at increased risk for depression. We examined maternal emotion socialization and children's emotion regulation as a pathway that may protect IPV‐exposed children from developing PTSS and depression. Fifty‐eight female survivors of IPV and their 6‐ to 12‐year‐old children participated. Results showed no direct relations between maternal emotion socialization and child adjustment. However, several indirect effects were observed. Higher mother awareness and acceptance of sadness and awareness of fear predicted better child sadness and fear regulation, respectively, which in turn was related to fewer child PTSS. Similar indirect pathways were found with child depression. In addition, mothers’ acceptance and coaching of anger was associated with better child anger regulation, which related to fewer depression symptoms. Implications for prevention and intervention with high‐risk families are discussed.

Neural plasticity and the development of attention: Intrinsic and extrinsic influences.

The development of attention has been strongly linked to the regulation of emotion and behavior and has therefore been of particular interest to researchers aiming to better understand precursors to behavioral maladjustment. In the current paper, we utilize a developmental psychopathology and neural plasticity framework to highlight the importance of both intrinsic (i.e., infant neural functioning) and extrinsic (i.e., caregiver behavior) factors for the development of attentional control across the first year. We begin by highlighting the importance of attention for children's emotion regulation abilities and mental health. We then review the development of attention behavior and underscore the importance of neural development and caregiver behavior for shaping attentional control. Finally, we posit that neural activation associated with the development of the executive attention network may be one mechanism through which maternal caregiving behavior influences the development of infants' attentional control and subsequent emotion regulation abilities known to be influential to childhood psychopathology.

The transactional relationship between parenting and emotion regulation in children with or without developmental delays.

Researchers have identified numerous internal and external factors that contribute to individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) abilities. To extend these findings, we examined the longitudinal effects of a significant external predictor (parenting) on children's ER abilities in the context of an internal predictor (intellectual functioning). We used cross-lagged panel modeling to investigate the transactional relationship between parenting and ER in children with or without developmental delays (DD) across three time points in early and middle childhood (age 3, 5, and 8). Participants were 225 families in the Collaborative Family Study, a longitudinal study of young children with or without DD. Child ER ability and maternal scaffolding skills were coded from mother-child interactions at ages 3, 5, and 8. Compared to children with typical development (TD), children with DD were significantly more dysregulated at all time points, and their mothers exhibited fewer scaffolding behaviors in early childhood. In addition, cross-lagged panel models revealed a significant bidirectional relationship between maternal scaffolding and ER from ages 3 to 5 in the DD group but not the TD group. These findings suggest that scaffolding may be a crucial parenting skill to target in the early treatment of children with ER difficulties.

Does a good fit matter? Exploring teaching styles, emotion regulation, and child anxiety in the classroom

The central goal of the present study was to examine how a child's emotion regulation ability may moderate the relations between teaching styles and anxiety in childhood. Participants were 33 children (21 males, 12 females; mean age 7.5 years, standard deviation = 0.42), their mothers and teachers. Children completed the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire – Revised to assess their emotion regulation, mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist to assess their child's anxiety and teachers completed the Teaching Styles Inventory to assess various teaching styles. Results indicated different patterns of associations between teaching styles and anxiety for well‐regulated versus dysregulated children. For example, it was found that children who are better able to regulate their emotions are better at coping with the potentially stressful context brought on by the expert teaching style than those children lower in regulation abilities. Preliminary evidence suggested that different teaching styles might be associated with different outcomes among children with differing regulatory characteristics. Results are discussed using the goodness‐of‐fit model.

Children's Emotional Reactions to Stressful Parent-Child Interactions

SUMMARY This paper examines children's physiological reactions to stressful parent-child interactions and tests the notion that vagal tone is a physiological index of the ability to regulate emotion. Basal vagal tone and the suppression of vagal tone at age 4-5 were examined as predictors of mother ratings of child's emotion regulation ability at age 8. Two hypotheses about the mechanism by which vagal tone predicts emotion regulation were examined: a stress inoculation hypothesis and a recovery from arousal hypothesis. Path analyses showed that age 4-5 regulatory physiology predicted child emotion regulation scores at age 8, and that this was partially mediated by the 4- to 5-year-old child's ability to maintain a low heart rate during stressful parent-child interactions. Interrupted time-series analyses of these events as a function of the child's basal vagal tone showed that children with higher basal vagal tone have both a larger heart rate increase to these events as well as faster recovery than children with lower vagal tone.

Impact of child maltreatment and interadult violence on children's emotion regulation abilities and socioemotional adjustment.

The present investigation sought to examine the unique and interactive effects of child maltreatment and interadult violence on children's developing strategies of emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment, as well as the mediational role of emotion dysregulation in the link between children's pathogenic relational experiences and behavioral outcomes. Person-oriented emotion regulation patterns (EMRPs) were determined based on children's emotional behavioral and self-reported responses to simulated interadult anger. One hundred thirty-nine 4- to 6-year-olds (88 maltreated, 51 nonmaltreated) and their mothers served as participants. Maltreatment history predicted children's EMRPs, with approximately 80% of the maltreated preschoolers exhibiting dysregulated emotion patterns (i.e., undercontrolled/ambivalent and overcontrolled/unresponsive types) compared with only 37.2% of the nonmaltreated controls. Undercontrolled/ambivalent EMRPs were associated with maternal reports of child behavior problems, and were found to mediate the link between maltreatment and children's anxious/depressed symptoms. The present study's findings increase understanding of process relations in pathogenic relational environments, and provide insight into emotion regulation deficits that may impede the development of psychological well-being in maltreated children with varying histories of interadult violence exposure.