Parental Emotional Expressivity Research Articles

Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia moderates the within-person relations of parental emotional expressivity and children's prosocial behaviors.

Parental supportive emotional expressivity could contribute to children's prosocial behaviors, and such an effect may differ for children with different levels of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). This study disentangled the stable differences across dyads (i.e., between-person effects) from the dynamic associations between parental expressivity and children's prosocial behaviors within dyads (i.e., within-person effects) and determined how resting RSA functioned as a susceptibility factor in such effects. The longitudinal design consisted of three measurements with a 1-year interval performed among 208 school-aged children (48.6% girls; Han nationality) and their parents (153 mothers and 55 fathers). The initial measurement was conducted when the children were 7 years old (Mage =7.13, SDage =.33). Resting RSA was calculated at the first measurement; parents reported children's prosocial behaviors and parental expressivity at each of the three measurements. The results demonstrated significant between- and within-person effects of parental expressivity on children's prosocial behaviors and found a moderating role of children's resting RSA in the within-person effects. These findings suggest that children displayed more prosocial behaviors when parents showed more supportive expressivity both across and within dyads, and higher resting RSA operated as a differential susceptibility factor in the intraindividual fluctuations in parental expressivity.

Emotion Understanding Correlates With Parental Emotional Expressivity in Chinese Youths With Hearing Loss and Typical Hearing.

This study aimed at examining the differences between Chinese youths with hearing loss (HL) and with typical hearing (TH) in emotion understanding (EU), parental emotional expressivity, and the associations between EU and parental emotional expressivity. The participants were 282 youths with HL (14.58 ± 3.42 years old) and 350 youths with TH (11.69 ± 2.49 years old). EU was measured by four visual-mode tasks, of which two involve language comprehension while the others do not. Parents reported positive and negative emotional expressivity on the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire. Covariates were controlled for including socioeconomic status, parent gender, youth gender, age, intelligence, and teacher-reported comprehension difficulties. Results showed that the four EU tasks were more challenging for the youths with HL than for the youths with TH. The interaction effect of the two groups × 4 tasks was not significant, suggesting that the differences between the two groups of youths in EU were generally similar across the four tasks. The parents of the youths with HL did not differ from the parents of the youths with TH in how often they displayed positive and negative emotional expressivity. Multigroup regression analyses revealed that negative emotional expressivity was negatively related to EU in the youths with HL but not in the youths with TH. However, these two regression coefficients were not significantly different. Positive emotional expressivity was not related to EU in either group. In conclusion, this study extends the knowledge about the EU of Chinese youths with HL and emotion-related socialization of the parents of these youths.

Sharing in the Family System: Contributions of Parental Emotional Expressiveness and Children’s Physiological Regulation

SYNOPSIS Objective . The current study examines whether associations between mothers’ and fathers’ emotional expressiveness and children’s observed sharing behavior differ for two young children in the same family and whether children’s baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) moderates relations between emotional expressiveness and sharing. Design . Altogether 69 families, including mothers, fathers, older siblings (Mage = 57.52 months), and younger siblings (Mage = 32.68 months) participated. Multilevel Poisson models were used to account for nesting of children within families and the count outcome of sharing. Results . Mothers who reported expressing more positive emotion had children who shared more, and this effect was moderated by child baseline RSA such that mothers who reported expressing more positive emotions had children who shared more when children had lower levels of baseline RSA. This finding was not significant for children with higher levels of baseline RSA or for fathers. Conclusions . Variations in the family’s emotional climate across individual members may be crucial to foster sharing behavior for children with lower levels of physiological regulation.

Anxiety symptomatology and academic performance in adolescents: The role of parental emotional expressivity during conflict interactions

AbstractResearch has shown that anxiety in adolescents has a negative impact on a wide range of psychosocial variables, including academic performance. This study explored the role of parental emotional expressivity during conflict interactions with their children as a potential moderator of the relationship between anxiety symptomatology and academic performance in adolescents. The sample consisted of 54 adolescents and both of their parents, who were videotaped while discussing a conflict. The adolescents’ anxious symptomatology was evaluated through a self‐report questionnaire, while their academic performance was operationalized by using their grade point average. The total duration of the parents’ emotional expressivity (both positive and negative affect) was obtained after being encoded. The results indicated that both the positive and negative affect of mothers served to moderate the relationship between the adolescents’ anxiety symptomatology and academic performance. However, such association was only moderated when the mothers presented moderate/high levels of negative affect or low/moderate levels of positive affect. Paternal emotional expressivity, on the other hand, was found not to be associated with their children's academic performance. These results point to the importance of developing parental intervention guidelines that help to raise awareness of the impact of emotional expression when interacting with their children.

Three-year Trajectories of Emotional Expressiveness among Maltreating Mothers: The Role of Life Changes.

Parents are perhaps the most direct and profound influences on children's development of emotional competence. For example, how and what emotions parents express in the family has implications for children's ability to understand and regulate their emotions. What is less well understood is what potential environmental or contextual factors impact parents' emotional expressiveness, particularly in high-risk samples prone to atypical emotional expressiveness (e.g., deficits in the production and recognition of emotional expressions). The present longitudinal study examined the association between life changes and parents' expression of positive and negative emotions, as well as, how these associations changed over time in a sample of maltreating mothers. Eighty-eight mothers with a substantiated history of physical abuse completed measures of emotional expressiveness and life changes experienced over the past 6 months when their children were in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Results indicated that life changes decreased over time, while parental emotional expressiveness remained stable. Moreover, life changes were associated across time with the expression of negative emotions, but were unrelated to expressions of positive emotions. Findings have important implications for understanding emotional expressiveness in high-risk samples.

Role of temperament in early adolescent pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems using a bifactor model: Moderation by parenting and gender.

We contribute to the literature on the relations of temperament to externalizing and internalizing problems by considering parental emotional expressivity and child gender as moderators of such relations and examining prediction of pure and co-occurring problem behaviors during early to middle adolescence using bifactor models (which provide unique and continuous factors for pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems). Parents and teachers reported on children's (4.5- to 8-year-olds; N = 214) and early adolescents' (6 years later; N = 168) effortful control, impulsivity, anger, sadness, and problem behaviors. Parental emotional expressivity was measured observationally and with parents' self-reports. Early-adolescents' pure externalizing and co-occurring problems shared childhood and/or early-adolescent risk factors of low effortful control, high impulsivity, and high anger. Lower childhood and early-adolescent impulsivity and higher early-adolescent sadness predicted early-adolescents' pure internalizing. Childhood positive parental emotional expressivity more consistently related to early-adolescents' lower pure externalizing compared to co-occurring problems and pure internalizing. Lower effortful control predicted changes in externalizing (pure and co-occurring) over 6 years, but only when parental positive expressivity was low. Higher impulsivity predicted co-occurring problems only for boys. Findings highlight the probable complex developmental pathways to adolescent pure and co-occurring externalizing and internalizing problems.

Links between Marital Relationship and Child-Parent Relationship: Mediating Effects of Parents’ Emotional Expressiveness

Family is viewed as a hierarchically organized system, which is comprised of marital, parental and sibling subsystems. The interaction of family subsystems is important for understanding children's social development. Although numerous studies have indicated that marital and child-parent relationship are interrelated, it is unclear how marital relationship influences child-parent relationship. Researchers have argued that marital relationship impacts child-parent relationship through parenting behavior. Parents who experience harmonious marriage tend to exhibit sensitive parenting, and develop warm parent-child relationship, while parents who experience conflictive marital relationship may exhibit harsh parenting, and develop low quality parent-child relationship. In addition, parental emotional socialization behavior may serve as a mediator of links between marital relationship and child-parent relationship; marital conflict or ambivalence is associated with parents' negative expressiveness, and a supportive marital relationship is associated with parents' positive expressiveness. Positive or negative parental expressiveness in turn may affect parent-child relationships.The current longitudinal study explored the mediating effects of parental emotional expressiveness in family on relations between marital relationship and parent-child relationship during three preschool years. We hypothesized that parents with a good quality marital relationship would display more positive emotional expressiveness and inhibit negative emotional expressiveness in the family, which result in good relationships with their children. Four hundred and fifty four preschoolers(254 boys and 200 girls, Mage = 50.92 months, SD = 4.21 at the first stage) and their parents participated in this study. Fathers and mothers reported their marital quality and emotional expressiveness, and rated their relationships with their child. The path analysis revealed that paternal positive and negative emotional expressiveness and maternal positive emotional expressiveness in the second year completely mediated the relation between marital quality in the first year and child-parent intimacy in the third year when intimate child-father relationship or intimate child-mother relationship were controlled in the first year. Specifically, father who experienced higher marital quality in the first year tended to express more positive emotions and less negative emotions in family in the second year, and had more intimate child-father relationship in the third year when intimate child-father relationship in the first year was controlled. However, maternal negative emotional expressiveness in the first year did not mediate the relation between marital quality in the second year and intimate child-father relationship in the third year. Moreover, mother who experienced higher marital quality in the first year tended to express more positive emotions in family in the second year, and had more intimacy child-mother relationship in the third year when intimate child-mother relationship in the first year was controlled, and paternal negative emotional expressiveness in the first year did not mediate the relation between marital quality in the second year and intimate child-mother relationship in the third year. We discussed the results from the family system and parental emotional socialization perspectives, and provided suggestions for family education.

Development and validation of the Parents’ Beliefs About Children’s Emotions Questionnaire.

Parents' beliefs about children's emotions comprise an important aspect of parental emotion socialization and may relate to children's mental health and well-being. Thus, the goal of this study was to develop the multifaceted Parents' Beliefs About Children's Emotions (PBACE) questionnaire. Central to our work was inclusion of multiple ethnic groups throughout the questionnaire development process, from initial item creation through assessment of measurement invariance and validity. Participants included 1,080 African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian parents of 4- to 10-year-old children who completed the initial item pool for the PBACE. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted with 720 of these parents to identify factor structure and reduce items. Confirmatory factor analysis was then conducted with a holdout sample of 360 parents to evaluate model fit and assess measurement invariance across ethnicity and across parent gender. Finally, validity of the PBACE scales was assessed via correlations with measures of parental emotional expressivity and reactions to children's emotions. The PBACE is composed of 33 items in 7 scales. All scales generally demonstrated measurement invariance across ethnic groups and parent gender, thereby allowing interpretations of differences across these ethnic groups and between mothers and fathers as true differences rather than by-products of measurement variance. Initial evidence of discriminant and construct validity for the scale interpretations was also obtained. Results suggest that the PBACE will be useful for researchers interested in emotion-related socialization processes in diverse ethnic groups and their impact on children's socioemotional outcomes and well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

The Contribution of Parenting Practices and Parent Emotion Factors in Children at Risk for Disruptive Behavior Disorders

The goal of this study was to examine the impact of different parenting characteristics on child disruptive behavior and emotional regulation among a sample of at-risk children. The sample consisted of 373 Australian 5- to 9-year-old children who were screened for serious behavior problems. Seven parenting variables based on self-report were evaluated, involving parenting practices, emotion beliefs and behaviors, emotion expressiveness, and mental health. Outcome variables based on parent/teacher report were child disruptive behavior problems and emotion regulatory ability. When entered simultaneously in a multiple regression analysis, inconsistent discipline, negative parental emotional expressiveness, and parent mental health demonstrated the strongest relationship to disruptive behavior problems and problems with emotion regulation. The data presented here elucidate multiple risk pathways to disruptive behavior disorders and can inform the design of prevention and early intervention programs.

Desenvolvimento de um Questionário de Experiências de (In) Validação Emocional na Família

Vários estudos comprovam a existência de uma relação entre as experiências precoces adversas, os estilos parentais e a vinculação na infância com o desenvolvimento de psicopatologia na adultez. O presente estudo explora as propriedades psicométricas do Questionário de Experiências de (In) Validação Emocional, que foi por nós desenvolvido, com o objectivo de avaliar retrospectivamente, o ambiente de validação (e de invalidação) emocional na família. A Análise Factorial Exploratória revelou uma estrutura de dois factores, que foi posteriormente confirmada através de uma Análise Factorial Confirmatória. Os dois factores foram designados por experiências de validação emocional e por experiências de invalidação emocional. Todas as subescalas apresentam valores de consistência interna muito elevados. A validade convergente e divergente do questionário foi comprovada pelas correlações encontradas com outras medidas retrospectivas (que avaliam os estilos parentais, o ambiente de expressividade familiar e as experiências de vida adversas), e com uma medida que avalia a psicopatologia na adultez.

Longitudinal Relations Among Parental Emotional Expressivity and Sympathy and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence

Concurrent and longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's sympathy, and children's prosocial behavior were assessed with correlations and structural equation modeling when the children were 55 months to 97 months old (n = 214; M age = 73 months, SD = 9.59) and 8 years later (n = 130; ages 150 to 195 months old, M = 171 months, SD = 10.01). Parent emotional expressivity (positive and negative) and children's sympathy were stable across time and early parent-reported sympathy predicted adolescents' sympathy and prosocial behavior. Parents' positive expressivity was positively related to sympathy and prosocial behavior, but in adolescence, this was likely due primarily to consistency over time. Early observed parental negative expressivity was negatively related to adolescents' prosocial behavior. Reported negative expressivity in childhood was negatively related to boys' sympathy in childhood and positively related to girls' sympathy behavior in adolescence. The later relation remained significant when controlling for the stability of parental expressivity and sympathy, suggesting an emerging positive relation between the variables for girls.

Longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's regulation, and quality of socioemotional functioning.

The role of regulation as a mediator of the relations between maternal emotional expressivity and children's adjustment and social competence was examined when children (N = 208) were 4.5 to just 8 years old (Time 1, T1) and 2 years later (Time 2, T2). At T2, as at T1, regulation mediated the relation between positive maternal emotional expressivity and children's functioning. When T1 relations and the stability of variables over time were controlled for in a structural equation model, T2 relations generally were nonsignificant, although parents' dominant negative expressivity predicted high regulation. In contrast, in regressions, the findings for parent positive expressivity, but not negative expressivity, held at T2 when T1 variables were controlled. Thus, relations for negative expressivity, but not positive expressivity, changed with age.

Longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's regulation, and quality of socioemotional functioning.

Longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's regulation, and quality of socioemotional functioning.

The relations of parental emotional expressivity with quality of Indonesian children's social functioning.

In Western societies, parental expression of positive emotion has been positively related to the quality of children's social functioning, whereas their expression of negative emotion has been negatively or inconsistently related. The relations of parental expressivity to 3rd-grade Indonesian children's dispositional regulation, socially appropriate behavior, popularity, and sympathy were examined. Parents, teachers, and peers reported on children's social functioning and regulation, and parents (mostly mothers) reported on their own expression of emotion in the family. Generally, parental expression of negative emotion was negatively related to the quality of children's social functioning, and regression analyses indicated that the relations of parental negative expressivity to children's popularity and externalizing behaviors might be indirect through their effects on children's regulation. Unexpectedly, parental expression of positive emotion was unrelated to children's social functioning.

The relations of parental emotional expressivity with quality of Indonesian children's social functioning.

The relations of parental emotional expressivity with quality of Indonesian children's social functioning.