Links Between Child Emotion Regulation, Maternal Response to Emotion, and Child. Adjustment in Children of Depressed Parents

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1 Links Between Child Emotion Regulation, Maternal Response to Emotion, and Child Adjustment in Children of Depressed Parents Jennifer S. Silk, Daniel S. Shaw, Tonya J. Lane, Emily Unikel, & Maria Kovacs Paper abstract submitted for the April 2005 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Atlanta, GA. Emotion regulation is emerging as an important construct in understanding children s risk for developing mood and behavioral disorders. Specifically, difficulty down-regulating negative emotions is associated with internalizing and externalizing problems. Emotion regulation also involves parental input on ways to express and modulate emotions, via mechanisms such as responses to children s emotions. Parents negative responses to children s emotions have been linked to children s adjustment, although few studies have focused on internalizing problems. The study of emotion regulation is particularly important among children of depressed mothers, given that deficits in regulating emotion can be transmitted from depressed parents to children through biological and socialization pathways. In this study we examine how child and parent contributions to emotion regulation relate to internalizing and externalizing among children of depressed and never-depressed mothers. Participants were 122 children (ages 3-9), including 70 children of mothers with a history of childhood-onset depression (COD) and 52 children of mothers with no history of major psychiatric disorder (NCOD). Two children from the NCOD group and 31 children from the COD group participated in the study with a sibling. Maternal diagnoses were confirmed using

2 lifetime structured diagnostic interviews. Data were collected in 2.5 hour laboratory visits during which mother-child dyads participated in a series of 4-5 developmentally appropriate tasks designed to elicit both positive and negative emotion. Children were seen in the lab for a followup visit 1-2 years later. Global and 10 s. interval codes of children s positive and negative affect during the interaction were obtained from video-taped observations. Exploratory Factor Analysis of these codes yielded a single Emotion Regulation (ER) factor characterized by high levels of positive affect, such as joy and laughing, and low levels of negative affect toward the mother and the task. Maternal responses to children s emotions were assessed using the Emotions as a Child Questionnaire (ECQ, Magai, 1997). Negative responses were composited to reflect Punitive, Neglecting, and Magnifying responses to children s emotions. Child internalizing and externalizing were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991). Results of bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1. Children s observed ER was negatively associated with concurrent internalizing and externalizing, as well as externalizing at follow-up. Findings for the RCE emerged primarily for the Emotion Magnification Scale, which reflects parental matching and amplifying of the child s emotion. Emotion magnification was marginally associated with internalizing and externalizing concurrently, and more strongly associated with internalizing and externalizing 1-2 years later. Additionally, COD mothers reported more emotion magnification (M=5.48, SD=1.64) than NCOD mothers (M=4.71, SD=1.70; t=2.38, p<.05). Multiple regression analyses using Linear Mixed Effects Models to control for sibling effects indicates that emotion magnification partially mediates the relation between maternal childhood-onset depression and internalizing at follow-up (see Figure 1).

3 These findings suggest that both child and parent contributions to emotion regulation are important in understanding the development of internalizing and externalizing disorders. Furthermore, negative responses to children s emotions, such as emotion magnification, may be one mechanism by which the negative effects of parental depression on children s adjustment are transmitted.

4 Table 1. Correlations among Child Emotion Regulation, Maternal Response to Emotion, and Child Internalizing and Externalizing Child ER * -.36* ** 2. ECQ Magnify --.26**.60** **.40*** 3. ECQ Neglect --.43*** ECQ Punitive --.21* Internalizing --.67***.56***.54*** 6. Externalizing --.52***.77*** 7. Internalizing-FU --.75*** 8. Externalizing-FU -- N = 122 at Time 1 and ranges from at Follow-Up (FU); + p<.10; *p <.05; **p <.01; ***p <.001.

5 ECQ Emotion Magnify.77*.56* COD vs. NCOD Child Internalizing at Follow-Up (2.93**) 2.17* Figure 1. Mediational Model of the Relations between Maternal Childhood-Onset Depression (COD), Emotion Magnification, and Child Internalizing