Parent emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation: associations with abused children's school functioning

A Systematic Review of Parent Socialization of Negative Affect in Clinical Child Samples: Relations to Youth Emotion Regulation Abilities

Emotion-focused parenting practices, known as parent emotion socialization, play a crucial role in shaping youth's emotion regulation (ER) abilities. The impact of parent emotion socialization behaviors (ESB) on youth ER has been studied extensively in community samples. However, research on these relations in clinical samples is more limited, albeit growing. The current systematic review sought to evaluate the existing literature examining parent ESB of negative affect in various clinical child and adolescent samples. A literature search was conducted in April 2023, resulting in 1153 abstracts being reviewed. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts to identify relevant papers, with 152 articles being independently reviewed in full, of which 26 articles met inclusion criteria and are included in the current review. Studies (16 cross-sectional, 6 longitudinal, 4 intervention) utilized multi-methods of assessing youth ER, including questionnaires, physiological, and observational measures in a range of clinical samples, including youth diagnosed with internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as youth at-risk for clinical diagnoses such as physically abused children. Overall, results support significant, negative associations between parent ESB practices and youth emotion dysregulation (rs = .22-.35) and negativity/lability (rs = .19-.60), and positive associations with youth ER abilities (rs = .18-.76). Some studies highlighted varying impacts of parental ESB on children with versus without clinical disorders/symptomology, with effects being more pronounced within clinical populations. Implications for these findings and future research directions are discussed, including the significance of focusing on parent ESB in intervention work with clinical child populations.

Negative family expressiveness and adolescents' externalizing problems: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a moderator and anger regulation as a mediator

Family environment, emotion regulation and biological sensitivity have been shown to be associated with adolescents' externalizing problem behaviours. However, findings regarding respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity are mixed and sometimes contradictory. This study aims to clarify the roles of RSA reactivity and anger regulation in the relationship between negative family expressiveness (NFE) and adolescents' externalizing behaviour by measuring RSA reactivity during the Parent-Adolescent Interaction Task (PAIT), designed to simulate a naturalistic negative family environment. In this study, 125 Chinese adolescents (M = 13.95 years, SD = 0.95; 48% male) completed questionnaires assessing negative family expressiveness, anger regulation and externalizing problems. Additionally, we collected electrocardiogram and respiration data during both the resting period and a 10-min PAIT. Results showed that anger regulation mediated the relationship between NFE and externalizing problem behaviours. Moreover, adolescents' RSA reactivity moderated this mediation effect, even after controlling for baseline RSA. Greater RSA suppression potentially indicated greater susceptibility, with the relationship between NFE and anger regulation being more pronounced in adolescents with greater RSA suppression compared to those with lesser RSA suppression. These findings highlight the importance of considering physiological systems, especially within the context of adverse family environments, when studying the relationships with externalizing problems.

"Pay Attention! Pay Attention! Pay Attention!!!": The Pivotal Role of Educators and the Educational System as Experienced by Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Educational institutions and educators are significant in children's lives, and they have a crucial role in implementing policies, practices, and sexual education to enhance children's safety. Such policies and practices should be based on the voices of CSA survivors. This study explored child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors' viewpoints on their past experiences with educators and the educational system. A qualitative thematic approach was used to analyze 61 written testimonies collected in 2020-2021 by the Israeli Independent Public Inquiry on CSA. Two interrelated themes arose: (1) CSA survivors' retrospective perspectives of educators and the educational system's responses to signs of their CSA, described as ranging from abusive to life-saving. Specifically, they shared three types of responses: (a) harmful and hurtful; (b) dismissive and ignoring; and (c) accepting and attending. (2) The second theme described the survivors' messages to educators to promote constructive change. The survivors conveyed expectations that educators should play a central role in CSA prevention, detection, and intervention and, specifically, the need for educators to receive professional training, provide beneficial sexual education, and identify and respond to CSA. The findings promoted moving beyond individual-level interventions to focus on improving educational institutional and organizational cultures related to CSA in both national and international contexts.

Exploring the complex links between childhood exposure to intimate partner violence, maltreatment, and self-regulation: A three-wave cross-lagged study

BACKGROUND

Intimate partner violence (IPV) often co-occurs with childhood maltreatment and negatively impacts children's development. While previous research has shown a direct link between these experiences and children's self-regulation, less is known about the potential unique effect and bidirectional associations between them.

OBJECTIVE

The present study aims to investigate the bidirectional effects among maternal IPV experiences, child maltreatment, and children's behavioral self-regulation.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

4,402 participants from three waves of the longitudinal study of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) were included in the study.

METHODS

Cross-lagged path analyses were conducted to examine the longitudinal reciprocal relationships among IPV, child maltreatment, and children's behavioral regulation when children were 3, 5, and 9 years old.

RESULTS

IPV exposure at ages 3 and 5 was negatively associated with levels of behavioral self-regulation at ages 5 and 9, even after accounting for physical maltreatment, psychological maltreatment, or neglect. Neglect at ages 3 and 5 was found to be associated with lower levels of behavioral self-regulation at later ages, when IPV exposure was considered in the models. Lower levels of behavioral self-regulation at age 3 were found to be linked with higher levels of psychological maltreatment, physical maltreatment, neglect, and IPV exposure at age 5.

CONCLUSION

This study revealed bidirectional effects between maternal IPV experiences, child maltreatment, and children's behavioral self-regulation. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that exposure to IPV during early childhood significantly predicts long-term behavioral self-regulation difficulties, even after controlling for the effects of child maltreatment.

Maternal and paternal emotion expression and youths' negative emotions: The moderation of resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia

OBJECTIVE

We investigated whether college students' resting Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) would moderate the association between parental negative dominant and submissive emotion expression and their negative emotions.

METHODS

Participants were 97 Chinese college students (28.87% male, Mage = 19.11, SD =.89). Participants reported their perceived maternal and paternal emotion expression, as well as their negative emotions. Resting RSA was assessed during a laboratory visit.

RESULTS

Parental negative dominant emotion expression was positively related to students' negative emotions. Additionally, the association between paternal negative dominant emotion expression and negative emotions was stronger among students with low (versus high) levels of resting RSA. Nonetheless, no similar association was found in maternal negative emotion expression.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings contribute important information regarding the different roles of maternal and paternal negative emotion expression in college students' emotional outcomes, and signify the interaction between parental socialization and individual characteristics in human developmental process.

Adversity and Emotional Functioning

Exposure to early adversity has been linked to variations in emotional functioning. To date, however, the precise nature of these variations has been difficult to pinpoint given widespread differences in the ways in which aspects of emotional functioning are defined and measured. Here, more consistent with models of emotional functioning in typically developing populations (e.g., Halberstadt et al., 2001), we propose defining emotional functioning as consisting of distinct domains of emotion expression, perception, knowledge, reactivity, and regulation. We argue that this framework is useful for guiding hypothesis generation about the specific impact of early adversity on children's emotional functioning. We operationalize the construct of emotional functioning, highlight what is currently known about the association between adversity exposure and each domain of emotional functioning, propose potential mechanisms for these associations, and set the stage for future research examining the development of emotional functioning in the context of early adversity.

Maternal experiences of childhood maltreatment moderate patterns of mother-infant cortisol regulation under stress

The relation between maternal and infant cortisol responses has been a subject of intense research over the past decade. Relatedly, it has been hypothesized that maternal history of childhood maltreatment (MCM) impacts stress regulation across generations. The current study employed four statistical approaches to determine how MCM influences the cortisol responses of 150 mothers and their 4-month-old infants during the Still-Face Paradigm. Results indicated that MCM moderated cortisol patterns in several ways. First, lower MCM mothers and infants had strong positive associations between cortisol levels measured at the same time point, whereas higher MCM mothers and infants did not show an association. Second, infants of higher MCM mothers had cortisol levels that were moderately high and remained elevated over the procedure, whereas infants of lower MCM mothers had decreasing cortisol levels over time. Third, higher MCM mothers and infants showed increasingly divergent cortisol levels over time, compared to lower MCM dyads. Finally, patterns of cross-lagged influence of infant cortisol on subsequent maternal cortisol were moderated by MCM, such that lower MCM mothers were influenced by their infants' cortisol levels at earlier time points than higher MCM mothers. These findings highlight MCM as one contributor to processes of stress regulation in the mother-infant dyad.

Longitudinal pathways of family influence on child self-regulation: The roles of parenting, family expressiveness, and maternal sensitive guidance in the context of child maltreatment

Maltreated children are susceptible to dysregulation, but developmental mechanisms at the family level that influence this process are understudied. In the current investigation, 4 mediators (positive parenting, positive and negative family expressiveness, and maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing) were examined as process variables through which maltreatment relates to 2 dimensions of child emotional self-regulation (adaptive emotion regulation and lability/negativity) measured across 3 time points (baseline, 2 months, and 6 months later) using longitudinal mediation analysis with latent growth modeling. These processes were evaluated in the context of a randomized controlled trial of a brief intervention aimed at improving maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing. Participants included 160 maltreating mothers randomized into intervention (n = 81) or control intervention (n = 79) conditions and 78 demographically matched, nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 238). In the primary analysis, maternal sensitive guidance at baseline mediated relations between early maltreatment and emotion regulation and lability/negativity at 6 months, and latent change in emotion regulation across the 3 time points. Additionally, the intervention predicted steeper positive change in emotion regulation. In the secondary analysis, there was evidence of indirect effects of the intervention on emotional self-regulation through maternal sensitive guidance, positive parenting, and positive family expressiveness. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Longitudinal associations between physically abusive parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation

The present study took a developmental psychopathology approach to examine the longitudinal association between parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation. Data collection spanned from 2004 to 2008. Ninety-two physically abusive parents completed yearly assessments of their emotional expressiveness, as well as their children's self-regulation abilities. Observational and behavioral measures were also obtained yearly to capture both parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation. Specifically, parents participated in a parent-child interaction task, which provided insight into their levels of flat affect. A puzzle box task was completed by each child to assess self-regulation. Results indicated, first, that greater parental expression of negative emotions predicted poorer self-regulation in children, both concurrently and across time. Second, parental expressions of positive emotions and parents' flat affect were unrelated to children's self-regulation. Findings inform our understanding of parental socialization of self-regulation and provide insight into the roles of distinct components of emotional expressiveness. Moreover, findings have crucial implications for understanding emotional expressiveness in high-risk samples and increase our understanding of within-group functioning among maltreating families that may serve as a means to direct intervention efforts.

Organization and management of the ways in which teachers and parents with children with ASD communicate and collaborate with each other

Objectives: This study empirically investigates critical issues relating to prevailing views and perceptions of teachers and parents with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) towards the organization and management of approaches to their efficient collaboration and communication. Methods: A total sample of 171 teachers and 50 parents with children with ASD attending primary mainstream or special school units in Greece were randomly selected and were subsequently invited to answer a structured questionnaire. Results: The key empirical results indicate 50.9% of teachers believe teacher-parent meetings for communication and information purposes should be arranged by the schools once a month; 49.1% of teachers once a week; and, the majority of parents (98%) every month. The majority of teachers (90.6%) are seen to contain the view that meetings with children's parents are critical; 90.1% of them feel respect for their students' parents; and, 69.6% of them take parents' views on their children's performance and behavior very seriously. All parents consider it very important to get to know children's teachers; the majority (82%) feel respect for their children's teachers; 76% of them take teachers' views on their children's performance and behavior into serious consideration; 39.2% of teachers and 88.0% of parents recognize their children's special educational needs. Conclusion: The critical factors found to play a fundamental role in teachers' views include: the work unit; previous experience of ASD; and, relevant postgraduate studies.

O processo da autorregulação no desenvolvimento de crianças

A autorregulação é um processo básico relacionado aos desfechos adaptativos ao longo do desenvolvimento. O objetivo do presente artigo foi realizar uma revisão temática sobre o conceito de autorregulação e suas relações com o desenvolvimento da criança. Primeiramente, foram abordados os fundamentos teóricos sobre o processo de autorregularão no desenvolvimento, de acordo com o Modelo Transacional do Desenvolvimento de Arnold Sameroff. Em seguida, foi focalizada a caracterização deste processo de acordo com os seguintes componentes principais: a regulação cognitiva e os mecanismos neurocognitivos, a regulação emocional e a regulação comportamental. Além disso, foi tratada a relação entre os processos regulatórios e o temperamento. Finalmente, foi também analisada a relevância do papel dos correguladores na composição do processo autorregulatório no desenvolvimento da criança.

Internal working models and adjustment of physically abused children: the mediating role of self-regulatory abilities

BACKGROUND

Abused children's internal working models (IWM) of relationships are known to relate to their socioemotional adjustment, but mechanisms through which negative representations increase vulnerability to maladjustment have not been explored. We sought to expand the understanding of individual differences in IWM of abused children and investigate the mediating role of self-regulation in links between IWM and adjustment.

METHODS

Cluster analysis was used to subgroup 74 physically abused children based on their IWM. Internal working models were identified by children's representations, as measured by a narrative story stem task. Self-regulation was assessed by teacher report and a behavioral task, and adjustment was measured by teacher report.

RESULTS

Cluster analyses indicated two subgroups of abused children with distinct patterns of IWMs. Cluster membership predicted internalizing and externalizing problems. Associations between cluster membership and adjustment were mediated by children's regulation, as measured by teacher reports of many aspects of regulation. There was no support for mediation when regulation was measured by a behavioral task that tapped more narrow facets of regulation.

CONCLUSIONS

Abused children exhibit clinically relevant individual differences in their IWMs; these models are linked to adjustment in the school setting, possibly through children's self-regulation.