Poster #18 - Relation between Parental Responsiveness and Emotion Regulation in Children with and without Oppositional Defiant Disorder

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Background: Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is one of the most frequently diagnosed childhood disorders. It is characterized by a recurrent pattern of emotional and behavioral symptoms, including an angry mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, and vindictiveness toward authority figures or, in the case of children and adolescents, toward adults. Numerous studies have shown a link between impaired emotion regulation and ODD symptoms. Given the critical role of emotion regulation plays in child development, particularly in children with ODD, it is critical to understand the elements that contribute to emotion regulation development to design effective prevention and intervention strategies. Parenting is crucial for emotion regulation in children. Much less is known, however, concerning the association between parenting and emotion regulation in children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), who are known to have poor emotion regulation.
Purpose: The current study aimed to examine how parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation related either unidirectionally or bidirectionally to one another over time and to investigate whether the associations were different in ODD and non-ODD groups.
Method: Data were collected each year for three consecutive years from a sample of 256 parents of children with ODD and 265 parents of children without ODD in China. Cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) were conducted to examine the longitudinal links between parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation.
Results: The results from both the CLPM and RI-CLPM suggested that the directionality of the link between parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation differs according to ODD status. The non-ODD group demonstrated a unidirectional link between early emotion regulation and subsequent parental responsiveness, consistent with the “child effect”. However, in the ODD group, the link between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation was transactional, in line with social coercion theory. Multiple-group comparison found that increased parental responsiveness was more strongly associated with improved child emotion regulation in the ODD group only.
Conclusion: Overall, the current study extended the parent effect, child effect, and social coercion theory by establishing a dynamic and longitudinal relationship between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation. In regard to practice, early treatments should concentrate on improving child emotion regulation in the non-ODD group, since this might contribute to an increase in parental responsiveness. Parenting programs could be an essential first step in preventing children with ODD from continuing to be maladjusted. Such programs should offer specific information and instruction on how parents foster their children’s growth via the provision of a warm, responsive environment.

Authors

• Ting He, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Xiuyun Lin, Institute of Developmental Psychology