Coregulation of Daily Mood and Children’s Internalizing Symptoms

• In Event: 2-026 - Studying the Impact of the Family on Children’s Health Through Multiple Levels of Analysis

Integrative Statement

Introduction
Internalizing symptoms dramatically increase from middle childhood to adolescence with previous studies suggesting emotion dynamics within family systems play an important role in shaping children’s psychological wellbeing (DeKlyen & Greenberg, 2008; Feldman, 2010). Similarly, interactions between parents and youth with depression involve escalation of negative affect suggesting internalizing symptoms shape emotional functioning within the family (McMakin et al., 2014). Thus, investigating possible reciprocal linkages in momentary and daily affect (i.e., coregulation) in parents-child dyads (Butler & Randall, 2011) may be particularly relevant for understanding the risk for depression during susceptible developmental stages. Yet few studies have looked beyond broad conceptualizations of negative and positive mood (e.g., vigor versus happiness has been linked to better psychological health) and most have exclusively focused on mother-child dyads. The current study extends prior work by examining coregulation of low and high arousal negative and positive mood among mother-child and father-child dyads, and associations between coregulation and children’s internalizing symptoms.

Methods
Mothers (n = 47), fathers (n = 39), and their 8 to 13-year-old (M = 11.28, SD = 1.50) child (n = 47; 28 girls, 19 boys) participated in a daily diary study for 56 consecutive days (Reynolds, Robles, & Repetti, 2016). Parents and their children completed 56 consecutive daily diaries at night before going to bed and one-time questionnaires. Daily mood was measured with the Profile of Mood States (POMS; McNair et al., 1981). Adjectives were grouped into clusters adapted from Cohen et al (2003) representing low and high arousal subcategories: vigor, happiness, calm, depression/anxiety, and hostility. Children’s self-report of internalizing symptoms were measured using both the Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) and the Childhood Depression Inventory Short (CDI-S; Kovacs, 1992).

Results and Discussion
A series of dual intercept multilevel models were estimated for each mood cluster and dyad (father-child, mother-child). Mother-child dyads exhibited coregulation of daily vigor (b = .05, p <.02) and hostility (b = .07, p <.01). Daily levels of hostility were related in father-child dyads (b = .06, p < .05). Further, children’s internalizing symptoms were related to mother-child coregulation of anxious and depressed mood. Children who reported below average symptoms of depression on the CDI, exhibited stronger daily linkage of anxious and depressed mood with mothers (b = .09, p < .01) compared to children who reported average (b = .04, p = .08) or above average symptom levels (b = -.02, p = .54). Children who reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression on the RCADS exhibited stronger coregulation of daily calm mood with their mothers (b = .09, p < .01). But their internalizing symptoms were not related to father-child coregulation. These findings suggest mother-child coregulation of low arousal positive and negative mood may be an interpersonal emotion dynamic that is linked with children’s mental health.

Authors

• Evelyn Mercado, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Presenting Author

• Rena L. Repetti, University of California, Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Theodore F Robles, UCLA
  Non-Presenting Author