Linking Mother-Toddler Affective Flexibility with Psychological Adjustment in Early Adolescence

• In Event: Parent and Child Shared Time and Interactions

Abstract

Emerging empirical evidence suggests that mother-child interactions characterized by less dyadic affective flexibility (diminished repertoire of expressions, difficulties modifying affect in response to changing demands, tendency to perseverate in certain states) are uniquely associated with children’s adolescents’ worse psychological adjustment concurrently or 1-2 years later, above and beyond the affective valance of those interactions (e.g., Hollenstein et al., 2004; Lougheed & Hollenstein, 2016; Lunkenheimer et al., 2011; Van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018). Advancing this work, we examined the longitudinal association between mother-toddler affective flexibility and adolescent psychological adjustment. We focused on toddlerhood because it marks a critical time when mothers and toddlers actively engage in co-regulation of their own and each other’s changing affect. Accordingly, greater dyadic flexibility in this process may support growth in children’s self-regulatory capacities over time and further contribute to optimal psychological adjustment in adolescence given this period of heightened risk for psychopathology. We hypothesized that greater mother-toddler affective flexibility during play and snack tasks at 2.5 years would predict fewer externalizing and internalizing symptoms at 14 years. Adolescents’ self-control at 13 years was tested as a mediator of these associations.

Participants included 128 children (62 boys) and their parents (mothers/fathers: 82%/86% White). At 2.5 years, mother-toddler dyads participated in a 15-minute semi-structured play and a 7-minute snack task. For each task, positive and negative affect for children and mothers were coded in 30-second intervals and used to quantify mother-toddler affective flexibility via state space analysis (see examples in Figure 1). At 13 years (67 families returned), adolescents reported on their self-control (Tangney et al., 2018). At 14 years, adolescents and/or parents reported on adolescents’ externalizing symptoms (Goodman, 1997, 1999), depressive symptoms (Radloff, 1977), and anxiety (Birmaher et al., 1997, 1999).

Results from separate path models revealed that greater mother-toddler affective flexibility during play (but not snack) was prospectively associated with adolescents’ fewer externalizing symptoms (Figure 2, top). A similar, albeit weaker, association manifested linking greater mother-toddler affective flexibility during snack (but not play) with adolescents’ fewer internalizing symptoms (Figure 2, bottom). Additionally, tests of indirect effect showed that, although greater adolescent self-control predicted lower externalizing symptoms (but not internalizing symptoms), no indirect effects from affective flexibility to externalizing or internalizing symptoms through self-control emerged.

Our findings suggest that the structural dynamics of affective expressions during early mother-child interactions share an enduring association with psychological adjustment in adolescence. Whereas greater dyadic affective flexibility may provide toddlers with valuable opportunities to experience nuances in their own and social partners’ affect (e.g., category, intensity, change), less flexibility constrains such opportunities during this critical developmental period. Less dyadic flexibility, therefore, may subsequently translate into maladaptive behavioral patterns that ultimately underlie externalizing and internalizing symptoms among adolescents. Interestingly, our findings also indicated that affective flexibility assessed under a toy-mediated interaction context (where affect was more likely to accompany events underway and involve object manipulation) and a toy-free caregiving context (where more direct communications about affective experiences were more likely to occur) were differentially related to externalizing and internalizing behaviors.

Authors

• Xiaomei Li, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Nancy McElwain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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