Examining Maternal Emotion Dismissing and Toddler’s Anger Proneness as Predictors for Preschoolers' Expressive Control

• In Event: Measurement and consequences of childhood self regulation and self control

Abstract

Preschoolers spontaneously attempt to control their negative emotion displays, termed expressive control, during periods of disappointment, and these abilities vary depending on whether children are in the presence of others (Cole, 1986; Cole et al., 1994). Preschoolers’ regulation of negative emotions is positively associated with their social competence (Liew et al., 2004) and behavioral regulation (Stifter et al., 2008). Therefore, it is important to understand predictors of individual differences in child expressive control. Maternal attempts to control, minimize, or punish children’s emotional expressions (i.e., emotion dismissing; ED) has been related to maladaptive child emotion regulation strategies (e.g., anger suppression; Berlin & Cassidy, 2003), putting children at risk for developing emotion disorders. However, these effects may vary by child temperament: For example, maternal ED was positively related to child internalizing behaviors at age 3 for children high in negative emotionality (Engle & McElwain, 2011). In this study, we 1) identified subgroups of preschoolers based on their observed expressive control during the Disappointment Gift Task (DGT) when the experimenter was present (EP) versus absent (EA), and 2) examined whether child anger proneness at age 2 moderated the relation between maternal ED at age 2 and child expressive control at age 3.5.

When children were age 2 (N = 125; 50% female), mothers reported on child sex, child anger proneness (Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire; Goldsmith, 1996; Cronbach’s alpha = .70), and their maternal socialization behaviors (Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions; Fabes et al., 1990). We created an ED subscale using reports of punitive, minimizing, or distress reactions to children’s negative emotions (Cronbach’s alpha = .85). At 3.5, children came into the laboratory and completed the DGT (Cole, 1986). We coded child affect in real time using Cole’s (1986) procedures and Ekman and Friesen’s (1978) Facial Action Coding Systems (FACS). Negative affect codes and positive and neutral (PN) affect codes were summed for an overall duration of negative affect and duration of PN affect during the EP and EA conditions, respectively.

Hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward’s method) suggested a four-cluster solution was appropriate. We extracted the mean durations for negative and PN affect across parts of the DGT for the four clusters using k-means clustering (Figure 1). Multinomial logistic regression revealed a significant interaction between anger proneness and maternal ED in predicting cluster membership. For families with higher maternal ED, higher anger proneness was related to a higher probability of being in the Dysregulated (Figure 2a) or Regulating (Figure 2b) clusters compared to the Positive/Neutral cluster.

These findings indicate there is important variability in children’s behavioral responses to negatively-valanced emotional contexts. Furthermore, in comparison to children in the Positive/Neutral cluster, those with higher anger proneness and higher maternal ED may be more likely to exhibit dysregulated expressive control abilities during disappointment, while others may exhibit expressive control in the presence of a stranger but show higher negative affect when they are alone. Further research should examine interactions between parenting and temperament as precursors of children’s later regulatory abilities.

Authors

• Frances M. Lobo, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Anna M Zhou, University of Utah

• Kristin A. Buss, Pennsylvania State University, University Park