3-151 - The Role of Close Relationships in Child Internalizing Disorders

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Relationships are both a context for the socialization of emotion as well as a context in which emotions can become dysregulated. Research in the field of developmental psychopathology has demonstrated that early experiences with caregivers imbue children with regulatory capacities and schemas that influence the risk for pathology throughout development (Sroufe et al., 2000). However, as children approach adolescence, they experience a shift in the social world such that peer relationships grow increasingly central while parents must support children’s increasing autonomy and competence. It is also during this period of relational flux that youth are at greatest risk for the emergence of internalizing disorders (Cyranowski et al., 2000). Therefore, interpersonal experiences may have especially potent consequences for preadolescents.

In this symposium, we adopt a developmental psychopathology approach and examine how parent and peer relationships are longitudinally associated with internalizing problems across the transition to adolescence. Two studies highlight the importance of specific parental behaviors (conditional regard and parental overcontrol) in conferring risk for internalizing disorders. Two presentations underscore the importance of the ways in which individuals think about relationship experiences (how experientially connected they are to relationship experiences) in accelerating risk for or protecting against internalizing disorders. These questions are investigated with a variety of methods (observational coding, narrative coding, psychophysiology, linguistic analysis) and represent cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• Jessica Lauren Borelli, Pomona College

Individual Presentations

• “I’ll love you if…”: Parent Empathy, Conditional Regard, and Children’s Depressive Symptoms - Presenting Author: Jessica Stern, Univ of Maryland College Park; Patricia A Smiley, Pomona College; Jessica Lauren Borelli, Pomona College

• Untangling The Relationship Between Child Anxiety and Parental Overcontrol Across the Transition to Adolescence - Presenting Author: Kelly Miller, University of Southern California; Jessica Lauren Borelli, Pomona College; Gayla Margolin, University of Southern California

• Parent-Child Communal Coping and Children’s Risk for Physiological Stress Reactivity and Anxiety Symptoms - Presenting Author: Hannah Faith Rasmussen, Pomona College; Jessica Lauren Borelli, Pomona College; Patricia A Smiley, Pomona College

• Negative Peer Experiences and Internalizing Problems in Childhood: The Protective Effect of Psychological Distancing - Presenting Author: Jessica West, Duke University; Martha Putallaz, Duke University; Eva Paige Paige Bahnuk, Duke University; Sarah Jones, Duke University; Kristen Foster Peairs, Duke University; Christina L Grimes, Duke Univ