Early Childhood Temperament as a Predictor of Caregiver Emotion Regulation Difficulties

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Emotion regulation is a requirement for functioning adaptively in the face of social and physical environmental challenges (Perasso & Velotti, 2020). Emotion regulation is especially important in the context of parenting because caregivers must flexibly adapt their emotions to fit the changing developmental needs of their children, while accommodating their children’s unique emotional/behavioral profiles. Effective parenting not only requires parents to regulate their own affective/behavioral states (e.g., in the face of caring for a distressed or dysregulated child), but they must also facilitate their children’s regulation (Rutherford et al., 2015). Although all children experience dysregulated affective states from time to time, children higher in temperamental negative affectivity (NA) are, by definition, especially persistent displayers of emotional dysregulation. Persistent child emotional dysregulation, in turn, may negatively impact caregivers’ ability to respond in a regulated and attuned manner (Morelen & Suveg, 2012). In this investigation we explored whether caregivers of very young children high in temperamental negative affectivity reported greater difficulty in emotional self-regulation. We also explored whether this relationship was moderated by temperamental effortful control, a cognitive dimension of child temperament thought to modulate children’s emotional reactivity.

Caregivers of 86 infants (43% female, Mage = 7.89 months), 95 toddlers/preschoolers (54% female, Mage = 24.24 months), and 86 young school age children (50% female, Mage = 57.04 months) were asked to rate their children’s temperament using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire – Revised, the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire, and the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire, respectively. Caregivers also completed the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale.

Consistent with expectations, we found in all three samples that caregivers of children high in negative affectivity had significantly more difficulties with emotion regulation relative to caregivers of children low in negative affectivity: infant r(86) = .27, p = .012, toddler/preschool r(95) = .36, p = .000, and early school age r(86) = .28, p = .010. In infancy however, but not in the other two samples, this effect was moderated by children’s temperamental effortful control. In infants, the association between child negative affectivity and caregiver emotion regulation was found only among caregivers of children rated low in effortful control (t(82) = -30.00, p = .000).

The finding of a significant association between child temperamental negative affectivity and caregiver emotion regulation difficulties in three different samples varying in age from infancy to early school age suggests that this effect is developmentally pervasive. This finding is also consistent with the possibility of a childcaregiver direction of effect model; although statistically the association could also result from a caregiverchild direction of effect or a third variable. The finding of the association in infancy weakens arguments in favor of an exclusive caregiverchild direction of effect, as temperament is presumed to present even prenatally when infants would be relatively immune to caregiver displays of dysregulation. The finding of a moderating effect of effortful control in infancy is consistent with the hypothesis that effortful control modulates negative affectivity; however, it is not clear why such a moderating effect would go away in later childhood.

Authors

• Tess Ann Simpson, East Tennessee State University
  Presenting Author

• Wallace E Dixon, East Tennessee State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chelsea Robertson, West Liberty University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diana Morelen, East Tennessee State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Oliver Michael Waltz, East Tennessee State University
  Non-Presenting Author