Poster #138 - Temperament and Emotional Overeating: The Mediating Role of Parental Responses to Children’s Negative Emotions

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Introduction
Emotional overeating (EOE) refers to the overconsumption of food to regulate negative emotions (Herle et al., 2018), and has been consistently associated with an increased risk of obesity (Valero-García et al., 2021). Child temperament characteristics in the domains of reactivity and regulation have been shown to be significantly related to EOE in children (Steinsbekk et al., 2018). The link between child temperament and EOE has also been found to be predicted by parental feeding practices, including emotion feeding. Parents co-regulate children’s negative emotions through response strategies not involving feeding, which may also impact children’s overeating to manage emotions (Topham et al., 2011). Less is known about whether parental responses to children’s negative emotions, unrelated to feeding, serve as one mechanism through which early temperament phenotypes impact subsequent EOE. The current analyses address this gap in the literature, with the ultimate goal of identifying family processes that can reduce emotional overeating in childhood.
Methods
The current analysis includes 351 children (48.5% girls; 74.6% White) and their parents participating in a longitudinal birth cohort study in the United States (N= 468). Child temperament at T1 (3 mo) and T2 (18 mo) were assessed through caregiver reports on the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised Very Short Form (IBQR-VSF; Putnam et al., 2006) and the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ; Putnam et al., 2006), respectively. At T2, the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 2002) was used to measure parental responses to their children’s negative emotions in 12 scenarios. Composite scales were calculated for positive (Problem-Focused, Emotion-Focused, Expressive Encouragement) and negative (Punitive, Minimizing, Distress) responses to children’s distress. Child EOE was assessed through parent report on the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire at T3 (36 mo) (CEBQ; Wardle et al., 2001).
Results
Path analyses were conducted using the lavaan package 0.6-12 in R 4.1.2. Results revealed that Negative Affectivity and Effortful Control at T1 and T2 predicted a child's EOE at T3, adjusting for child gender and race/ethnicity (Figures 1 & 2). Positive parental responses to child distress at T2 were significant mediators of the association between T1 Orienting/Regulation and T3 EOE (β=-.02, SE=.01, p=.046). However, negative parental responses to child’s distress at T2 was not a significant predictor of the associations between T1 temperament and T3 EOE. There was a significant indirect effect of T2 Surgency on EOE through positive responses to child distress (β=-.03, SE=.01, p=.04). Child’s Negative Affectivity (T2) also had a significant indirect effect on EOE through negative parental responses to child distress (β=.03, SE=.02, p=.030).
Conclusions
Temperament phenotypes involving reactivity and regulation have implications for children's emotional eating, but some of the relations are indirect or mediated by how parents respond to their children's negative emotions. Results also highlight the need to examine different temperament dimensions and both positive (e.g., problem-solving) and negative (punitive, distress) parental coping strategies over time. Education and prevention aimed at helping parents to cope with their children’s negative emotions in relation to temperament characteristics may reduce emotional overeating in early childhood.

Authors

• Sehyun Ju, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Samantha Iwinski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Kelly K. Bost, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign