Flexible or Inconsistent? Effects of Parent-Child Dyadic Flexibility on Emotion Regulation Vary by Depressive Symptoms

• In Event: 2-173 - Dynamic Approaches to Parent-Child Interactions from Infancy to Adolescence

Integrative Statement

Dyadic flexibility refers to the ability of interaction partners to dynamically adapt their behavior in response to one another and the relational context. In the parent-child relationship, a lack of dyadic flexibility may be a risk factor for psychopathology. Individuals with higher depressive symptoms show greater inconsistency and lower flexibility in their parenting behavior, which may increase the risk of psychopathology for children by impacting emotion regulation skills. Although lower flexibility has been observed among parents with depressive symptoms, it is not yet clear how parental depressive symptoms change the nature of dyadic processes between parent and child. Likewise, little attention has been paid to understanding how the microanalytic dynamics of the parent-child relationship vary by parental depressive symptoms. The current study aimed to fill these gaps by measuring dyadic behavior as it unfolded in real time, and assessing whether the relationship between dyadic flexibility and child regulatory outcomes varied in the context of heightened depressive symptoms.

A community sample of 100 mothers and their 3-year-old children (54% female) participated. Mothers’ and children’s behavior during a free play period was videotaped and coded offline. Observations were visualized and quantified using State Space Grids, which capture real-time trajectories of dyadic behavior. Dyadic behavioral flexibility was measured as the total number of transitions between distinct dyadic behavioral states, providing a measure of how often behavior changed throughout the course of the task. Maternal depressive symptoms were measured via self-report on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Child emotion regulation and negativity/lability were measured one year later via mother-report on the Emotion Regulation Checklist. Relationships among dyadic flexibility, maternal depressive symptoms, and child emotion regulation were assessed using a path model (see Figure 1).

Dyadic behavioral flexibility predicted greater negativity/lability in children, but this effect was moderated by maternal depressive symptoms. Simple slopes analyses showed that dyadic flexibility predicted higher child negativity/lability only when maternal depressive symptoms were high (β=.13, p<.001; see Figure 2). A marginal moderation effect was also observed for the relationship between dyadic flexibility and child emotion regulation. When maternal depressive symptoms were high, greater dyadic flexibility predicted lower emotion regulation (β=-.04, p<.05), but predicted higher emotion regulation when depressive symptoms were low (β=.05, p<.05). Results suggest that in the context of depressive symptoms, maternal behavior was more inconsistent rather than a deliberate adjustment of behavior to suit children’s needs (i.e., flexibility), which was associated with lower regulatory ability among children. Results also suggest that greater consistency in dyadic behavior is needed for the development of emotion regulation for children of parents with greater depressive symptoms, who may be vulnerable to developing symptoms of depression themselves. These results highlight the importance of utilizing microanalytic measures of dyadic behavior to better understand how mental health risk impacts the parent-child dyad. Future work is needed to clarify the role of dyadic behavioral flexibility for children’s emotion regulation in the context of psychopathology symptoms.

Authors

• Amanda M Skoranski, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Erika Lunkenheimer, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author