Poster #139 - Maternal psychopathology symptoms, teaching behaviors, and child emotion regulation

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Mothers’ psychopathology symptoms predict poorer emotion regulation (ER) in children and may lead to later internalizing and externalizing problems (Blandon et al., 2008; Suveg et al., 2011). Research suggests that psychopathology symptoms may influence children’s ER via parent-child interaction mechanisms. For example, depressed mothers often exercise excessive control, while anxious mothers tend to provide less warmth and autonomy support (Cummings et al., 2005; Moore et al., 2004). Here, we investigate maternal teaching as a buffer of the negative influence of psychopathology symptoms on ER. In contrast to the above interaction qualities associated with maternal psychopathology symptoms, maternal teaching supports children’s autonomy and promotes their capacity for self-regulation (Lunkenheimer et al., 2013).
Mothers (N = 81) and their children visited the laboratory when children were three and four years old. At age three, the Brief Symptom Inventory measured mothers’ psychopathology symptoms (Derogatis & Fitzpatrick, 2004). In a dyadic task, mothers guided children towards completion of a difficult puzzle, and maternal behavior was later coded using an established second-by-second coding system. Teaching codes were assigned when mothers provided explanations or volunteered problem-solving and decision-making strategies (e.g., “Do you think your puzzle looks like the one in the picture?”). At both time points, mothers reported on child ER with the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997).
Preliminary analyses revealed that maternal education correlated with teaching behavior (r = .21, p = .02), but was insignificant in our overall model and thus removed for parsimony. Controlling for child ER at age three, a model predicting child ER at age four from maternal psychopathology symptoms, teaching, and a symptoms by teaching interaction fit our data well, F(4, 76) = 15.39, p < .001, and accounted for 44.76% of the variance in child ER at age four. A simple slopes post-hoc analysis revealed a significant moderation effect. When maternal teaching was low (1 SD below the mean), psychopathology symptoms and child ER were significantly negatively related, such that more symptoms predicted lower ER, b = -.02, t(76) = -4.68, p < .001. However, when maternal teaching was high (1 SD above the mean), mothers’ psychopathology symptoms had no influence on child ER, b = .00, t(76) = 0.38, p = .70.
Results suggest that maternal teaching behaviors may buffer the negative influence of maternal psychopathology symptoms on children’s developing ER. In contrast, low maternal teaching may act as a risk factor for poorer ER development in the context of psychopathology symptoms. One interpretation is that mothers experiencing high levels of psychopathology symptoms negatively influence child ER by providing less developmentally-supportive teaching. Thus, when maternal teaching is high, children fare better in terms of ER. Findings shed additional light on the mechanisms by which risk is transmitted from parents to children and suggest that promoting maternal teaching behaviors may support ER development in children of mothers with higher psychopathology symptoms.

Authors

• Catherine Hamby, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Amanda M Skoranski, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erika Lunkenheimer, Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author