Poster #208 - Parental emotion coaching relates to fewer behavior problems for children higher in negative affectivity

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Emotion Coaching (EC) is a meta-emotion philosophy characterized by parent’s accepting attitudes and encouraging or dismissing responses towards their child’s emotions (Gottman et al., 1996). Through EC, parents are able to communicate, acknowledge, and coach their child’s understanding of emotions, as well as teach how to express and cope with feelings appropriately. Previous research in middle childhood shows that child temperament moderates the influence of parents’ EC beliefs on parents’ EC behaviors and children’s coping strategies (Lagace-Seguin & Gionet, 2009; Yap, Allen, Level, and Katz 2008; Yap, Allen, & Sheeber, 2007). The role of positive emotions in child psychopathology is receiving increasing attention (i.e., Yi, Gentzler, Ramsey & Root, 2016). We extend the literature by examining whether child temperament moderates longitudinal links of parents’ EC behaviors towards positive and negative emotions observed in early childhood with children’s behavior problems in middle childhood. We focused on negative affectivity (NA) in particular because of its relevance to both internalizing and externalizing problems.
Data was collected from 22 mother-child dyads who had participated in a larger study when children were 4- and 9-years-old. Parents completed the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Putnam, 2006) at the 4-year-old time point to measure children’s temperament, and the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983) at the 9-year-old time point to measure children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. At the 4-year-old time point, dyads completed puzzle and etch-a-sketch tasks that were videotaped for the larger study. All videotapes were coded by two independent coders for mothers’ encouragement and discouragement of children’s positive and negative emotion (ICCs=.47 - .91). These behaviors were coded over 30-second intervals and averaged for comparability across dyads.
Multivariate regressions were conducted to examine the role of negative affectivity (NA) as a moderator in relations between EC and problem behaviors. NA interacted with encouragement of positive emotion at age 4 years to predict both internalizing and externalizing problems, F (1, 15) = 6.55, p = .022. Children who were low in NA had fewer problem behaviors, regardless of parents’ encouragement of positive emotions. For children high in NA, greater parental encouragement of positive emotions at age 4 years was associated with fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviors at age 9 years.
There was a trend for NA to interact with discouragement of positive emotion at age 4 and type of internalizing or externalizing problem, F (1, 15) = 3.56, p = .079. Children low in NA had few problem behaviors regardless of parents’ discouragement of positive emotions. For children high in NA, greater parental discouragement of positive emotions was associated with fewer internalizing, but not externalizing behaviors.
Overall, mothers’ engagement with children’s positive emotion appeared to be protective against the development of internalizing and externalizing behaviors for children high in NA, particularly mothers’ encouragement of positive emotion. The absence of findings for EC of negative emotions may be related to the object-focused nature of the tasks. Future work will benefit from examining EC in multiple contexts and consider the role of negative emotions.

Authors

• Alyssa Gatto, Virginia Tech
  Presenting Author

• Danhua Zhu, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erika Hernandez, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel Miller-Slough, Duke University Medical Center
  Non-Presenting Author

• Martha Ann Bell, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Dunsmore, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author