Caregivers’ Reward of Adolescent Negative Emotions when Co-Reminiscing about a Devastating Tornado

• In Event: 1-108 - Toward Understanding Heterogeneity in Adolescent Trauma Experiences and Later Adjustment Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Background: This study explores caregivers’ style of co-reminiscing with their adolescents about a traumatic natural disaster and the association with enduring anxiety. One pathway that has been shown to contribute to youth’s long-term post-disaster adjustment is parental emotion socialization (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 2001). For example, caregiver reward of emotional expression (including problem solving and empathizing) is generally associated with adaptive youth psychosocial outcomes. However, reward of negative emotional expression may also be an indicator that the caregiver is ruminating on negative experiences. In addition, when youth focus only on the negative content of the event, they are more likely to present with elevated anxiety and distress. Caregiver reward of youth narratives that are centered around negative experiences could be an indicator of over-engaging or co-rumination on negative content, which may act to maintain elevated youth anxiety. The goal of this study was to assess how caregiver reward of negative emotional expression moderates the link between youth trauma recollections and enduring anxiety several years following a devastating tornado. It is hypothesized that the association between youth negative personal impact and anxiety would be stronger for youth whose parents engage in reward of negative emotional expression.
Methods: One-hundred and thirty-six adolescents (ages 12 to 17; 78% African American) provided individual recollections about their experiences during the tornado four years following the disaster. Caregivers and youth then provided joint recollections while co-reminiscing about the tornado and caregivers completed a measure of youth anxiety (Behavior Assessment System for Children; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004). Individual youth recollections were coded for negative personal impact; joint conversations were coded for caregiver reward of emotional expression.
Results: The interaction of negative personal impact and caregiver reward was significant (B=2.95, SE=.97, p=.003), suggesting that caregiver reward significantly moderated the association between negative personal impact and youth anxiety. Simple slope analyses at 1 SD above and below the mean indicated that adolescents’ focus on negative personal impacts was associated with anxiety when parents rewarded their youth’s expression of negative emotion (B=3.72, SE=0.98, p <.001). In contrast, youth focus on negative personal impacts and anxiety were unrelated at low caregiver reward. This association was further moderated by youth gender; caregiver reward moderated the association between youth negative impact and anxiety for girls (B=4.47, SE=1.08, p <.001) but not for boys (B=1.36, SE=.93, p =.14).
Conclusions: Consistent with prior literature, results indicate that youth who focus on negative content in their recollections reported elevated anxiety symptoms years after the disaster. In addition, caregiver reward of negative emotional expression moderated the link between negative personal impact and youth anxiety, such that negative personal impact was only positively associated with anxiety at high levels of caregiver reward of negative emotional expression. However, this pattern emerged only for girls, suggesting that caregiver reward of negative emotions during co-reminiscing may only be associated with enduring anxiety for female adolescents. Findings may help clarify developmentally and gender appropriate interventions for helping parents and adolescents communicate following traumatic events, such as discussing both positive and negative experiences.

Authors

• Madelaine R. Abel, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author

• Eric M. Vernberg, University of Kansas
  Non-Presenting Author

• John E. Lochman, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristina McDonald, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle L. Hendrickson, Jackson Behavioral Health Hospital, Miami, FL
  Non-Presenting Author