Toddler Emotional States, Temperamental Traits, and Their Interaction: Associations with Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting

Thai and American mothers socialize preschoolers' emotional development differently

Cultures vary in beliefs about appropriate display of emotion. Children rely on adults to help them understand emotional experiences and display emotions in a culturally appropriate manner. The present study compared how emotion display differs between Thai and American mother-child interactions during preschool. Language samples from 21 Thai and 21 American mother-child dyads were elicited using prompted reminiscing, book reading, toy play, and child personal narrative tasks. Results revealed group differences in emotion talk and behavior. American dyads expressed more intense emotions during interactions compared to Thai dyads. American dyads also displayed more emotion behaviors than Thai dyads, whereas Thai dyads used more emotion words compared to American dyads. Additionally, there were gender differences in the expression of emotion, with boy dyads more emotionally intense than girl dyads in both groups. Boys displayed more negative emotion behaviors compared to girls during prompted reminiscing, whereas girls used more negative emotion words than boys during the personal narrative task. These findings demonstrate cultural and gender differences in socialization goals and practices regarding emotion display and underscore the influence of mothers' scaffolding on children's emotional development. This research reveals the variability in beliefs and values that underlie emotional development across sociocultural contexts.

Negative internal working models as mechanisms that link mothers' and fathers' personality with their parenting: A short-term longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE

Research on associations between parents' personality and parenting has a long history, but mechanisms that explain them remain unsettled. We examined parents' explicit and implicit negative internal working models (IWMs) of the child, assessed at toddler age, as linking parental personality and parenting.

METHOD

Mothers and fathers from 200 community families provided personality self-reports (Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Empathy, and Anger/Hostility) when their children were infants. When children were toddlers, the explicit negative IWMs included self-reported low-mentalizing reflective functioning and resentment regarding the child. The implicit negative IWMs were coded as negative relational schemas from parental interviews. Parental positive affect, responsiveness, and power-assertive control were observed in lengthy interactions. Measures were parallel for mother- and father-child dyads.

RESULTS

Mothers' implicit IWMs linked the association between low Empathy and more power-assertive control. Fathers' explicit IWMs linked the associations between high Neuroticism and low Agreeableness and lower responsiveness. Additionally, fathers' Agreeableness and Empathy directly predicted their parenting. Two paths (Agreeableness → implicit IWMs, and explicit IWMs → responsiveness) significantly differed between mothers and fathers.

CONCLUSIONS

IWMs may link parental personality with parenting. The findings integrate and inform several bodies of literature in personality, social cognition, and developmental psychology.

Impact of social support for mothers as caregivers of cerebral palsy children in Japan

PURPOSE

Social supports are critical to alleviate the psychological and physical burden of primary caregivers of children with disabilities. This study aims to (1) clarify how cerebral palsy in children affects caregiving burden of the mother, and (2) identify the social supports that can effectively reduce that burden.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This is a cross-sectional study in which mothers of children with cerebral palsy completed questionnaires and provided data regarding their child's condition, family support, social support usage, degree of satisfaction with supports, and caregiving burden.

RESULTS

We analyzed responses from 1190 mothers. Support usage, particularly of home-visit nursing, home care, home-visit rehabilitation, and mobility support, was higher in severely burdened groups. However, the proportion of satisfaction with social support in groups with light or no burden were higher, particularly in home care, home-visit rehabilitation, training/treatment, and short stays. Mothers whose children have an intellectual disability and gross exercise ≥1 in addition to tube feeding or intravenous nutrition especially felt a strong sense of burden. The most effective measure in reducing mother's sense of burden was short stays.

CONCLUSIONS

Mothers with children who can move and have an intellectual disability felt more burden compared with mothers of bedridden children. The findings clarify that supports, such as home care and short stays, have a significant impact on reducing the mother's sense of burden.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Due to the large sample size, we believe that the results can inform efforts to increase social support for caregivers.

Reexamining the association between the interparental relationship and parent-child interactions: Incorporating heritable influences

Family systems research has identified two key processes (spillover and compensatory), linking interparental relationship quality to the parent-child relationship. However, previous research has focused on the parent as the sole initiator and had not often considered the role of the child in these processes. The present study adds to the literature by leveraging a genetically informed design to examine possible child evocative effects on spillover and compensatory processes. Participants were from a longitudinal parent-offspring adoption sample of 361 linked sets of adoptive parents of an adopted child (57% male), and the child's birth parents. Adoptive parents reported on child pleasure and anger at 18 months and the interparental relationship at 27 months. Parent-child interactions were observed at child age 6 years, and heritable influences were assessed via birth mother self-report at 5 months. Our results indicated a dampening effect where higher interparental warmth at child age 27 months was associated with less adoptive mother-child coercion at child age 6 years, and a compensatory effect where higher interparental conflict was associated with more adoptive father-child positive engagement. Moreover, our results indicated child-driven effects via both genetic and environmental pathways. Specifically, higher levels of birth mother negative affect (heritable characteristic) were associated with lower levels of adoptive father-child coercion. Also, child anger was positively associated with interparental conflict, and child pleasure was positively associated with interparental warmth. These findings support findings from the family literature with evidence of compensatory mechanisms, while also highlighting the active role children play in shaping family interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Correlation between Adolescents’ Temperament and Internet Addiction Levels in Junior High School in Surabaya, Indonesia

Background: Internet addiction has become a serious problem in the world, especially for adolescents. Temperament plays an important role in influencing internet addiction in adolescents. Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between students’ characteristics and temperament with their internet addiction levels in one of the junior high schools in Surabaya, Indonesia. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, which used primary data that was obtained from students who filled out a questionnaire. The study sample included 114 students in one of the junior high schools in Surabaya. The dependent variable was the internet addiction level; the dependent variables were gender, age, student grade, and temperament. An Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and an Early Adolescents Temperament Questionnaire-Revised (EATQ-R) were the tools used for data collection. Data was collected in November 2019. The sample selection was done through the stratified random sampling technique. The data was subsequently analyzed using the Fisher’s exact and Spearman correlation tests. Results: There was a significant positive correlation between age (p<0.01), student grade (p<0.05), negative affectivity (p<0.01), and surgency (p<0.05) toward internet addiction levels. There was a significant negative correlation observed between effortful control (p<0.05) and internet addiction levels. Conclusion: There was a significant relationship between age, student grade, negative affectivity, surgency, and effortful control and adolescents’ internet addiction levels.

Sensing everyday activity: Parent perceptions and feasibility

Mobile and wearable sensors provide a unique opportunity to capture the daily activities and interactions that shape developmental trajectories, with potential to revolutionize the study of development (de Barbaro, 2019). However, developmental research employing sensors is still in its infancy, and parents' comfort using these devices is uncertain. This exploratory report assesses parent willingness to participate in sensor studies via a nationally representative survey (N = 210) and live recruitment of a low-income, minority population for an ongoing study (N = 359). The survey allowed us to assess how protocol design influences acceptability, including various options for devices and datastream resolution, conditions of data sharing, and feedback. By contrast, our recruitment data provided insight into parents' true willingness to participate in a sensor study, with a protocol including 72 h of continuous audio, motion, and physiological data. Our results indicate that parents are relatively conservative when considering participation in sensing studies. However, nearly 41 % of surveyed parents reported that they would be at least somewhat willing to participate in studies with audio or video recordings, 26 % were willing or extremely willing, and 14 % reported being extremely willing. These results roughly paralleled our recruitment results, where 58 % of parents indicated interest, 29 % of parents scheduled to participate, and 10 % ultimately participated. Additionally, 70 % of caregivers stated their reason for not participating in the study was due to barriers unrelated to sensing while about 25 % noted barriers due to either privacy concerns or the physical sensors themselves. Parents' willingness to collect sensitive datastreams increased if data stayed within the household for individual use only, are shared anonymously with researchers, or if parents receive feedback from devices. Overall, our findings suggest that given the correct circumstances, mobile sensors are a feasible and promising tool for characterizing children's daily interactions and their role in development.

Differences in mother-child and father-child RSA synchrony: Moderation by child self-regulation and dyadic affect

Parents and preschoolers show respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) synchrony, but it is unclear how child self-regulation and the dyadic affective climate shape RSA synchrony and how synchrony differs for mothers and fathers. We examined child average RSA, externalizing problems, and dyadic positive affect as moderators of the synchrony of dynamic, within-epoch child and parent RSA reactivity during a challenging task. Mothers (N = 82) and fathers (N = 60) oversampled for familial risk participated with their 3-year-olds. For mothers, when children showed either higher externalizing or lower average RSA, negative RSA synchrony was observed as dynamic coupling of maternal RSA augmentation and child RSA withdrawal, suggesting inadequate support of the child during challenge. However, when children showed both higher externalizing and lower average RSA, indicating greater regulatory difficulties overall, positive synchrony was observed as joint RSA withdrawal. The same patterns were found for father-child RSA synchrony but instead with respect to the moderators of higher externalizing and lower dyadic positive affect. Findings suggest moderators of RSA synchrony differ by parent and shared positive affect plays a robust role in fathers' RSA reactivity and synchrony. Mothers may be more attuned to children's regulatory capacities, whereas fathers may be more influenced by the immediate behavioral context.

Toddler emotion expressions and emotional traits: Associations with parent-toddler verbal conversation

The present study examines how toddler emotions may influence their own or their parents' participation in parent-toddler verbal conversation. Limited, indirect evidence suggests that toddler positive emotions may encourage, whereas negative emotions may disrupt, parent-toddler verbal exchanges, but these hypotheses have not been tested directly. We investigated two aspects of toddler emotions- their emotion expressions and their emotional traits- and examined their relations with parent-toddler verbal conversation engagement. In a sample of families with 18-month-olds (N = 120), we used live, unstructured home observations of toddler emotion expressions and spontaneous parent-toddler verbalizations, and collected parent ratings of toddler temperament. We found that less surgent toddlers who expressed more frequent negative emotion attempted fewer verbalizations. Among all toddlers, those expressing positive emotion received more frequent parent verbal responses, and, unexpectedly, more failed parent attempts to engage their toddler in conversation. Parent-initiated conversation was unrelated to toddler emotion expressions or emotional traits. We discuss how best to integrate the study of early emotional and language development from a transactional perspective.

Longitudinal interplay of young children's negative affectivity and maternal interaction quality in the context of unequal psychosocial resources

Interaction quality and child temperament predict early and later child development. Research hints at transactional interrelations of both aspects but lacks adequate data to examine this assumption. Maternal psychosocial resources are suspected moderators in this context but rarely taken into account. Drawing on data of the German National Educational Panel Study we conducted a cross-lagged panel analysis on the longitudinal interplay of maternal interaction quality and children's negative affectivity at 6-8, 16-18, and 25-27 months and compared mothers with and without accumulated strains. Both variables showed moderate to high structural and rank order stability over time and low but increasing connections. In the case of accumulated stress factors, interaction quality is clearly impaired and high negative affectivity acts as an additional burden while low negative affectivity helps strained mothers to maintain higher interaction quality but only in the first year of life.

Child language and parenting antecedents and externalizing outcomes of emotion regulation pathways across early childhood: A person-centered approach

Decreases in children's anger reactivity because of the onset of their autonomous use of strategies characterizes the prevailing model of the development of emotion regulation in early childhood (Kopp, 1989). There is, however, limited evidence of the varied pathways that mark this development and their proposed antecedents and consequences. This study used a person-centered approach to identify such pathways, antecedents, and outcomes. A sample of 120 children from economically strained rural and semirural households were observed while waiting to open a gift at ages 24, 36, and 48 months. Multitrajectory modeling of children's anger expressions and strategy use yielded three subgroups. As they aged, typically developing children's strategy use (calm bids and focused distraction) increased while anger expressions decreased. Later developing children, though initially elevated in anger expression and low in strategy use, demonstrated marked growth across indicators and did not differ from typically developing children at 48 months. At-risk children, despite developing calm bidding skills, did not display longitudinal self-distraction increases or anger expression declines. Some predicted antecedents (12-24 month child language skills and language-capitalizing parenting practices) and outcomes (age 5 years externalizing behavior) differentiated pathways. Findings illustrate how indicator-specific departures from typical pathways signal risk for behavior problems and point to pathway-specific intervention opportunities.