Poster #122 - Infant Negative Affect, Maternal Emotion Dysregulation, and Maternal Experiential Avoidance of Child Emotions Across Time

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Emotion dysregulation (ED), identifiable in infancy as low control over negative affect (NA; (Keenan, 2012; Miljevich et al., 2019), may transmit from mothers to their infants through parenting practices (Morelen et al., 2014; Ostlund et al., 2019). Several studies have examined the transmission of broad maternal ED to young children’s emotion regulation difficulties (e.g. Shaw & Starr, 2019; Tan & Smith, 2019); however, to our knowledge, none have simultaneously tested longitudinal transactions among young child NA, the specific maternal ED domain of non-acceptance of own emotions, and maternal ED within the parenting context (i.e., experiential avoidance [EA] of child emotions). It is possible that the parenting-specific domain of EA may be especially salient to infant and toddler NA. The current study utilizes a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to delineate within- versus between-family effects among child NA, maternal ED, and maternal EA across three time-points in early childhood.

Participants were 186 children (55.4% male, 83.3% White) and their mothers who participated in a longitudinal study at child ages 1 (T1), 2 (T2), and 3 (T3). To assess maternal ED (i.e., non-acceptance of own emotions) and EA, mothers completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and the Parental Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (PAAQ; Cheron et al., 2008), respectively, at each timepoint. To assess maternal perceptions of child negative affect, mothers completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (T1; Rothbart, 1981), Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (T2; Putnam et al., 2006), and Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (T3; Rothbart et al., 2001).

One RI-CLPM was tested in Mplus v.7.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012) which handled missing data using full information maximum likelihood estimation. Random intercepts for EA and NA were regressed on family socioeconomic status, given preliminary bivariate correlations. The RI-CLPM showed very close fit, χ2(10) = 8.01, p = .628; SABIC = 2419.51; RMSEA = .00; SRMR = .04; CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.00. Regarding the between-family component, ED and EA random intercepts (b = 0.15, SE = 0.04, p <.001), as well as ED and NA random intercepts (b = 0.09, SE = 0.05, p = .044), positively covaried. In other words, mothers’ who endorsed higher non-acceptance of their emotions tended to also endorse their child’s greater negative affect, as well as greater avoidance of their child’s emotions. Within-person stability effects tended to trend positively, though no significant within-person stability or cross-lagged effects emerged. However, with respect to residuals of the within-person components, T3 NA and EA covaried (b = 0.06, SE = 0.03, p = .025), such that one’s higher non-acceptance was associated with their own greater experiential avoidance. The standardized factor loadings for the ED (βs = 0.74 - 0.80) and EA (βs = 0.73 – 0.85) random intercepts tended to be higher than those of NA (βs = 0.63 – 0.65), prospectively indicating greater trait-like stability in the maternal versus child emotion traits. Overall, findings suggest that there may exist greater stability in between-family relations relative to within-family processes. Implications and future directions will be further discussed.

Authors

• Natalee Price, Miami University - Ohio
  Presenting Author

• Nicole M. Baumgartner, Miami University - Ohio

• Elizabeth J Kiel, Miami University - Ohio