Poster #28 - Exposure to stressful life events and internalizing psychopathology during adolescence: The moderating role of interactive repair

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Exposure to stressful life events may put adolescents at elevated risk for internalizing psychopathology, including depression and anxiety (Jenness et al., 2019; March-Llanes et al., 2017). Given the increased risk for internalizing psychopathology during this developmental period (Hankin, 2015; Steinberg et al., 2006), it is vital to elucidate family processes that reduce vulnerability to internalizing symptoms following stressful experiences to inform family-based interventions. According to the mutual regulation model (Tronick, 1989; Tronick & Reck, 2009), interactive repair—a shift from a mismatched emotional or behavioral state to a matched state during parent-child interactions—plays a critical role in promoting coping and regulatory capacities. Interactive repair between adolescents and their mothers may be one process that can buffer adolescents against internalizing psychopathology in the face of stress. Thus, the current study will examine whether interactive repair during mother-adolescent interactions moderates the association between exposure to stressful events and adolescents’ internalizing psychopathology at 1-year follow-up.

Eighty-four adolescents (Mage=13.29 years) and their mothers (Mage=43.2 years) of a predominantly White non-Hispanic sample participated in the current study. Exposure to stressful life events was assessed by mothers’ reports on major stressful life events, such as financial strain and loss of family members, that adolescents have experienced in their life time. Adolescents and mothers also completed a 10-minute conflict discussion task during a laboratory visit, and maternal and adolescent affect was coded in 5-s epochs. Affect codes consisted of five categories (i.e., negative disengagement, negative engagement, neutral affect, positive affect, positive engagement) and were modified from existing coding systems (Gottman et al., 1996; Lougheed et al., 2014). We will apply State Space Grids (SSG; Hollenstein, 2013) to the adolescent and mother affect data to capture mother-adolescent interactive repair, which we operationalize as the mother’s and adolescent’s simultaneous participation in positive affective behavior (i.e., positive affect, positive engagement) directly after participation in negative affective behavior (i.e., negative disengagement, negative engagement). Interactive repair will be computed as the proportion of interactive repair moments out of all negative moments, engaged either by adolescents or mothers. Adolescents reported on their symptoms of depression and anxiety using the CES-D (Radloff, 1977) and the SCARED (Birmaher et al., 1997, 1999), respectively, at baseline and 1-year follow-up.

We hypothesize that a) greater exposure to stressful events will be associated with higher severity of adolescents’ depression and anxiety symptoms at 1-year follow-up, controlling for symptoms at baseline. We also expect that b) mother-adolescent interactive repair will have a buffering effect on the association between exposure to stressful events and adolescents’ internalizing symptoms. We specifically hypothesize that the proposed association between stressful events and internalizing symptoms will be weaker for adolescents who are more likely to experience interactive repair with their mothers. By examining the contribution of interactive repair to internalizing psychopathology following stressful experiences, we aim to advance understanding of behavioral and emotional dynamics during parent-adolescent interactions (e.g., Lougheed & Hollenstein, 2016; Lougheed et al., 2015) in youths’ mental health.

Authors

• Stephanie Gyuri Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Kelly M. Tu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Nancy McElwain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign