Longitudinal Links Between Parents’ Emotion Expressivity in Childhood and Adolescent Adjustment in Chinese American Families

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Parents’ emotion expressivity has been concurrently and longitudinally related to children’s emotional and behavioral functioning (Denham et al., 2000; Chen, Zhou, Eisenberg, Valiente, & Wong, 2011; Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998), likely through mediators relating to self-regulatory capacities (Valiente et al., 2006). Beyond childhood, there is some evidence that parental expressivity is concurrently linked to adolescents’ psychological adjustment, including both internalizing and externalizing problems (Stocker, 2007). What is less known is whether parent emotion expressivity in childhood predicts psychological adjustment across the developmental transitions (e.g., from childhood into adolescence). Moreover, few studies examined these relations in non-Western samples. Chinese American immigrants are a rapidly growing population (Echeverria-Estrada & Batalova, 2020) with significant within group heterogeneity in socioeconomic privilege (López, Ruiz, & Patten, 2017). To address these gaps in the literature, the present study aims to examine longitudinal relations between parents’ emotional expressivity in childhood and adolescents’ psychological adjustment in Chinese American immigrant families, with the goal of contributing to culturally informed interventions and better understanding of the early development of psychopathology.
The present study used data from a 10-year longitudinal study spanning childhood to adolescence of Chinese American immigrant families. The study had two aims: 1) to examine change over the approximately ten-year time span from Wave 1 to Wave 3 in children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, 2) to examine prospective relations of parental reported emotional expressivity in childhood to psychological adjustment in adolescence, controlling for early adjustment. Based on prior findings, we hypothesize that 1) parental negative-dominant expressivity in childhood will be related to worse internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence and 2) parental positive expressivity will predict better adolescent psychological adjustment.
The sample included 258 children at Wave 1 (M age = 7.4 years, SD = 0.71, 48% female) and 137 adolescents at Wave 3, approximately 10 years later (M age = 16.7, SD = 0.59, 52% female). Parent emotion expressivity at Wave 1 was self-reported using positive expressivity (alpha = 0.91) and negative-dominant expressivity (9 items, alpha = .88) of the Self-Expressiveness within the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ, Halberstadt et al., 1995). At Wave 1 and Wave 3, parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), including internalizing (32 items, W1 alpha = 0.86, W3 alpha = 0.89) and externalizing (35 items, Wave 1 alpha = 0.85, Wave 3 alpha = 0.84). At Wave 1, children completed the Behavioral Problem Index (BPI; National Longitudinal Surveys; Peterson & Zill, 1986), which was divided into internalizing (alpha = 0.49) and externalizing (alpha = 0.76) problems, respectively. At Wave 3, adolescents provided self-report of internalizing (alpha = 0.90) and externalizing (alpha = 0.84) problems using the Youth Self Report (YSR; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001).
We will use confirmatory factor analysis to establish a measurement model of adjustment at Wave 1 and Wave 3 and structural equation modelling to examine relationships between Wave 1 parental expressivity and Wave 3 adjustment, controlling for Wave 1 adjustment.

Authors

• Esmeralda Herrera, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Kaley Curtis, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author