Maternal Elaborative Language in Shared Emotion Talk with ODD Children: Relationship to Child Emotion Competencies

From infancy to eight: How early maternal mental health, emotion reminiscing, and language shape children's mental health

To test the transmission of mental health difficulties from mother to child, we examined mediation through emotion reminiscing conversations and child language. Maternal depression symptoms were measured at 9 months post-partum, and child mental health outcomes were measured at age 8 years. Emotion reminiscing conversations between 1,234 mother-child pairs (624 boys, 610 girls) were recorded as part of a large, diverse, longitudinal cohort Growing Up in New Zealand. The 1,234 reminiscing conversations were transcribed and coded for maternal elaboration and emotion resolution quality (mother and child). The coded reminiscing variables did not mediate the pathway from maternal depression to child mental health outcomes; however, each maternal reminiscing variable together with child language skill serially mediated the relationship from maternal depression symptoms to child-reported anxiety and depression symptoms, and parent-reported child externalizing symptoms. Language as a skill and it's use as a tool for making shared meaning from past events are highlighted as possible mechanisms for the intergenerational transmission of mental health difficulties. These findings point to potential opportunities for early interventions, including prevention of and support for postnatal depression, family intervention in reminiscing training, and supporting child language development.

A Systematic Review of Parent Socialization of Negative Affect in Clinical Child Samples: Relations to Youth Emotion Regulation Abilities

Emotion-focused parenting practices, known as parent emotion socialization, play a crucial role in shaping youth's emotion regulation (ER) abilities. The impact of parent emotion socialization behaviors (ESB) on youth ER has been studied extensively in community samples. However, research on these relations in clinical samples is more limited, albeit growing. The current systematic review sought to evaluate the existing literature examining parent ESB of negative affect in various clinical child and adolescent samples. A literature search was conducted in April 2023, resulting in 1153 abstracts being reviewed. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts to identify relevant papers, with 152 articles being independently reviewed in full, of which 26 articles met inclusion criteria and are included in the current review. Studies (16 cross-sectional, 6 longitudinal, 4 intervention) utilized multi-methods of assessing youth ER, including questionnaires, physiological, and observational measures in a range of clinical samples, including youth diagnosed with internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as youth at-risk for clinical diagnoses such as physically abused children. Overall, results support significant, negative associations between parent ESB practices and youth emotion dysregulation (rs = .22-.35) and negativity/lability (rs = .19-.60), and positive associations with youth ER abilities (rs = .18-.76). Some studies highlighted varying impacts of parental ESB on children with versus without clinical disorders/symptomology, with effects being more pronounced within clinical populations. Implications for these findings and future research directions are discussed, including the significance of focusing on parent ESB in intervention work with clinical child populations.

Children's oppositional defiant disorder symptoms and neural synchrony in mother-child interactions: An fNIRS study

Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) between mothers and children responds to the temporal similarity of brain signals in joint behavior between dyadic partners and is considered an important neural indicator of the formation of adaptive social interaction bonds. Parent-child interactions are particularly important for the development and maintenance of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in children, but the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms are unknown. Therefore, in the current study we measured INS between mothers and children in interactions by using simultaneous functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), and explored its association with ODD symptoms in children. Seventy-two mother-child dyads were recruited to participate in the study, including 35 children with ODD and 37 healthy children to be used as a control. Each mother-child dyad was measured for neural activity in frontal, parietal, and temporal lobe regions while completing free-play as well as positive, and negative topic discussion tasks. We used Phase-locked value to calculate the synchrony strength and then used the K-means algorithm and k-space based alignment tests to confirm the specific patterns of parent-child synchrony in different brain areas. The results showed that, in free-play (right MFG and bilateral SFG), positive (left TPJ and bilateral SFGdor), and negative (bilateral SFGmed, right ANG, and left MFG) topic discussions, the mother-child pairs showed different patterns of INS. These specific INS patterns were significantly lower in the ODD group compared to the control group and were negatively associated with ODD symptoms in children. Network analyses showed that these INS patterns were connected to different nodes in the ODD symptom network. Our findings suggest that ODD mother-child dyads exhibit lower neural synchrony across a wide range of parent-child interactions. Neural synchrony in the context of interpersonal interactions provides new insights into understanding the neural mechanisms of ODD and can be used as an indicator of neural and socio-environmental factors in the network of psychological disorder symptoms.

Parent Emotion Socialization and Positive Emotions in Child and Adolescent Clinical Samples: A Systematic Review and Call to Action

The majority of the emotion socialization behaviors (ESB) literature has focused on community samples and socialization of negative emotions. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that ESB are also critical in setting the foundations for the healthy development of positive emotions, with implications for developmental psychopathology. We conducted a systematic review of research examining parent ESB and youth positive emotions in clinical child and adolescent samples. A literature search was conducted in March 2021, resulting in 563 abstracts being reviewed. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts to identify relevant papers, with 53 articles being reviewed in full. Seven articles (four cross-sectional and correlational, three intervention) were included in the current review, of which one was with an internalizing sample, three were with an externalizing sample, and three were with a neurodevelopmental disorder sample. Results varied regarding the role of parent ESB in youth positive emotions across clinical populations. In correlational studies, minimal evidence was found for the association between parent ESB and youth positive emotions, but across the three intervention studies, there was evidence that both parent ESB and children's positive emotions can be improved through intervention. We present a preliminary model of relations between youth psychopathology, parent ESB, and child positive emotions, with consideration of potential moderators of links between ESB and positive emotions. Finally, we discuss limitations of the existing body of research, and offer specific recommendations for future research directions.

Examining Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing as a Protective Factor in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychopathology

Most research examining the impact of early parental depression on the developing child has focused on the nature of parenting practices observed in depressed adults. Maternal elaborative reminiscing, or the extent to which mothers elaboratively discuss past shared experiences with their children, has a considerable influence on children's emotional and social development and is understudied within the context of maternal depression. The current study is the first to examine whether maternal elaborative reminiscing in middle childhood mediates the association between exposure to maternal depressive symptoms in infancy and later internalizing and externalizing problems. The study included 206 mother-child dyads recruited from the community who participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed when offspring were 6-months old. At 5-years old, dyads were observed during a free play task to measure sensitive and harsh-intrusive parenting and during a reminiscing task to measure maternal elaboration. Teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing problems were collected at age 7. A saturated path model revealed that maternal elaborative reminiscing, but not sensitive or harsh-intrusive parenting, fully mediated the association between maternal depression in infancy and externalizing, but not internalizing, problems. Reduced maternal elaboration during parent-child reminiscing constitutes one way in which risk from early maternal depression is associated with later externalizing problems.