Mother-Child Interactions and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Preschoolers over Time: Inhibitory Control as a Mediator

Parental Rejection and School-aged Children's Externalizing Behavior Problems in China: The Roles of Executive Function and Callous-unemotional Traits

This study examined the mediating role of children's executive function (EF) in the relation between parental rejection and children's externalizing behavior problems and whether this mediation varies depending on their callous-unemotional (CU) trait levels. Two hundred and eighty-four Chinese school-aged children and their fathers and mothers participated. Both fathers and mothers reported on parental rejection, children's externalizing behavior problems, EF, and CU traits. The results showed that EF mediated the association between parental rejection and externalizing behavior problems. Moreover, the negative link between EF and externalizing behavior problems was moderated by CU traits; in particular, the combination of higher-level CU traits and lower-level EF predicted more externalizing behavior problems. Our findings point to the importance of considering family context and multiple personal factors simultaneously to decrease children's behavior problems.

Strengthening mother-child interactions among mothers and children with behavior problems at early development

The present study examined the effectiveness of a personalized remote video feedback parenting program to improve mother-child interactions and child behavior outcomes among mothers of children with behavior problems in comparison to counterparts with no behavior problems. The sample comprised 60 mothers and their 2-to-6-year-old children, including children with behavior problems (BP = 19) and children without behavior problems (NoBP = 41). The Strengthening Bonds program included one in-person group session and remote personalized video feedback about their mother-child interactions in a play situation via smartphone for six weeks. Mother-child interactions were the primary outcome, and children's behaviors were the secondary outcome. Pre- and post-intervention assessments were performed. The mother-child interactions were recorded during free- and structured-play situations and were then analyzed by the Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO) and the Dynamics of the dyad activity coding system. Additionally, the mothers answered the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The results showed that, in the post-intervention, the mother-child interaction pattern improved in the BP group, especially in the teaching dimension of the PICCOLO. Also, after the program, more children with normal classification were in the BP group.

The intergenerational transmission of executive function: The mediating effect of parental harsh discipline

BACKGROUND

The important roles of parental EF in shaping children's EF is less clear, especially in Chinese families. Moreover, it is suggested that the negative parenting behavior may be important environmental mechanisms underlying the EF transmission.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to examine the transmission of EF across generations and the mediating roles of parental harsh discipline in this transmission in a Chinese sample.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

A total of 311 Chinese preschool-aged children and their fathers and mothers were recruited from three public kindergartens in Beijing.

METHODS

The Chinese version of Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version (BRIEF-A), Parent-child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC) and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschooler Version (BRIEF-P) were respectively used to assess parental EF, harsh discipline and children's EF.

RESULTS

Both paternal and maternal EF positively predicted children's EF (β_paternal = 0.16, p < .01; β_maternal = 0.42, p < .001), and maternal but not paternal psychological aggression (standardized indirect estimate = 0.03, p < .05) and corporal punishment (standardized indirect estimate = 0.02, p < .05) mediated the above transmission.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings broaden our understanding of the distal or proximal factors and processes that account for the development of child EF in Chinese culture. Interventions focusing on improving parental especially maternal parenting practices would be helpful to shape children's EF or to interrupt the transmission of poor EF.

Child internalizing and externalizing behaviors: Interplay between maternal depressive symptoms and child inhibitory control

Maternal depression is a risk factor for child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Aiming to investigate the moderating role of child inhibitory control on this relationship, we invited a sub-sample of dyads from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort study (MoBa) for a lab-based assessment (N = 92, M age = 68 months, Range = 59-80, 50% girls). Maternal depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), while child behaviors were measured using the Child Behavior Check List, and inhibitory control using a child friendly version of the Flanker-task. As expected, higher levels of concurrent maternal depressive symptoms predicted higher levels of child internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Importantly, and in line with our predictions, child inhibitory control moderated the association. Lower levels of inhibitory control predicted a stronger association between concurrent maternal depressive symptoms and child behavioral outcomes. The results support prior research suggesting that concurrent maternal depression poses a risk for child development, and highlight that children with lower levels of inhibitory control are more vulnerable to negative environmental influences. These findings contribute to our understanding of the complexity of parental mental health issues on child development and suggest avenues for personalized treatment programs for families and children at risk.

Inhibitory control within the context of early life poverty and implications for outcomes

Early life poverty confers risk for unfavorable outcomes including lower academic achievement, behavioral difficulties, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Disruptions in inhibitory control (IC) have been posed as one mechanism to explain the relationship between early life poverty and deleterious outcomes. There is robust research to suggest that early life poverty is associated with development of poorer IC. Further, poorer IC in children is related to decreased academic achievement and social competence, and increased externalizing and internalizing behavior. There is some parent-report evidence to suggest that IC is a mediator of the relationship between poverty and externalizing behaviors, as well as some limited evidence to suggest that IC is a mediator between poverty and academic achievement. Future work should aim to determine whether early life poverty's relation to IC could be explained by verbal ability which is thought to be central to the development of effective IC. In addition, future neuroimaging work should utilize IC fMRI tasks to identify key neural mechanisms that might contribute to a relationship between early life poverty and IC.

The Emotion Dynamics Conundrum in Developmental Psychopathology: Similarities, Distinctions, and Adaptiveness of Affective Variability and Socioaffective Flexibility

A recent emphasis in developmental psychopathology research has been on emotion dynamics, or how emotional experience changes over time in response to context, and how those emotion dynamics affect psychosocial functioning. Two prominent emotion dynamics constructs have emerged in the developmental psychopathology literature: affective variability and socioaffective flexibility. Affective variability is most often measured using momentary methods (e.g., EMA) and is theorized to reflect reactivity and regulation in response to context, whereas socioaffective flexibility is typically measured in the context of parent-child interactions and theorized as the ability to move effectively through a range of affective states. Notably, affective variability is considered broadly maladaptive; however, socioaffective flexibility is theorized to be fundamentally adaptive. Despite these diametric views on adaptability, these two constructs share an underlying dependency on non-effortful emotion change in response to context, which raises questions about whether these constructs are, at their core, more similar than dissimilar. This review examined the literatures on affective variability and socioaffective flexibility in child and adolescent samples, examining associations with psychosocial and clinical correlates, as well as conceptual and methodological similarities and distinctions. Findings indicate that despite considerable theoretical overlap, there are sufficient differences-albeit largely methodological-that justify continuing to treat these constructs as distinct, most notably the influence of parents in socioaffective flexibility. The review closes with several recommendations for future study targeted at further clarifying the distinctions (or lack thereof) between affective variability and socioaffective flexibility.

A Family Socialization Model of Transdiagnostic Risk for Psychopathology in Preschool Children

This longitudinal study examined the presence of general (P) and specific internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) psychopathology factors in a community sample of preschool children. We assessed child and contextual correlates of P, INT, and EXT, and tested a model connecting socioeconomic risk to these factors through family socialization processes and child cognitive abilities. Participants were 501 children recruited at birth and followed up at 18 months and 3 years. Child and family functioning were measured using parental reports, observation, and standardized assessments. Both mothers and their partners reported on children's mental health, permitting the estimation of a trifactor model of psychopathology that captured caregivers' shared and unique perspectives with respect to P, INT, and EXT. Results revealed several transdiagnostic correlates of the common-perspective P factor, including family income, maternal education, maternal depression, and maternal responsiveness, as well as marginal associations with sibling negativity and children's language and theory of mind abilities. Several shared and unique correlates of INT and EXT were also observed. Structural equation modelling revealed that the effects of family income and maternal education on P operated indirectly through maternal responsiveness, while the effects of maternal education on INT and EXT operated through maternal reflective capacity, albeit in opposite directions. Together, these results suggest that the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on general psychopathology are organized in a temporal cascade from distal to proximal risk.

Parent Technology Use, Parent-Child Interaction, Child Screen Time, and Child Psychosocial Problems among Disadvantaged Families

OBJECTIVE

To disentangle the pathways of parent technology use, parent-child interactions, child screen time, and child psychosocial difficulties among disadvantaged families in Hong Kong.

STUDY DESIGN

Parents of 1254 3-year-old children from the KeySteps@JC project reported on the number of hours their children used electronic devices every day and evaluated their children's psychosocial behaviors using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. These parents also reported on their own digital device usage patterns and the frequency of parent-child interactions and provided sociodemographic data. Structural models were tested with parent technology use (independent variable), parent technological distractions and parent-child interactions and child screen time (mediators), child psychosocial problems (dependent variable), and children's age and sex and family socioeconomic status index (confounding variables).

RESULTS

Parent distraction with technology during parent-child interactions completely mediated the overall association between parent problematic digital technology use and child screen use duration. Parent problematic digital technology use was positively and directly associated with child psychosocial difficulties. In addition, it was indirectly related to child psychosocial difficulties through technological distractions and reductions in parent-child interactions and increased media use by children.

CONCLUSION

Higher parent digital technology usage was associated with reduced parent-child interactions and increased child screen time and psychosocial difficulties in disadvantaged families. These results suggest that limiting parents' use of electronic devices in front of their young children could be beneficial for childhood psychosocial development.

The building blocks of social competence: Contributions of the Consortium of Individual Development

Social competence refers to the ability to engage in meaningful interactions with others. It is a crucial skill potentially malleable to interventions. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to select which children, which periods in a child's life, and which underlying skills form optimal targets for interventions. Development of social competence is complex to characterize because (a) it is by nature context- dependent; (b) it is subserved by multiple relevant processes that develop at different times in a child's life; and (c) over the years multiple, possibly conflicting, ways have been coined to index a child's social competence. The current paper elaborates upon a theoretical model of social competence developed by Rose-Krasnor (Rose- Krasnor, 1997; Rose-Krasnor and Denham, 2009), and it makes concrete how underlying skills and the variety of contexts of social interaction are both relevant dimensions of social competence that might change over development. It then illustrates how the cohorts and work packages in the Consortium on Individual Development each provide empirical contributions necessary for testing this model on the development of social competence.

The building blocks of social competence: Contributions of the Consortium of Individual Development

Social competence refers to the ability to engage in meaningful interactions with others. It is a crucial skill potentially malleable to interventions. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to select which children, which periods in a child's life, and which underlying skills form optimal targets for interventions. Development of social competence is complex to characterize because (a) it is by nature context- dependent; (b) it is subserved by multiple relevant processes that develop at different times in a child's life; and (c) over the years multiple, possibly conflicting, ways have been coined to index a child's social competence. The current paper elaborates upon a theoretical model of social competence developed by Rose-Krasnor (Rose- Krasnor, 1997; Rose-Krasnor and Denham, 2009), and it makes concrete how underlying skills and the variety of contexts of social interaction are both relevant dimensions of social competence that might change over development. It then illustrates how the cohorts and work packages in the Consortium on Individual Development each provide empirical contributions necessary for testing this model on the development of social competence.

Understanding the parent-child coregulation patterns shaping child self-regulation

Parent-child coregulation, thought to support children's burgeoning regulatory capacities, is the process by which parents and their children regulate one another through their goal-oriented behavior and expressed affect. Two particular coregulation patterns-dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility-appear beneficial in early childhood, but their role in the typical development of self-regulation is not yet clear. The present study examined whether dynamic parent-child patterns of dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility in both affect and goal-oriented behavior (e.g., discipline, compliance) predicted multiple components of preschoolers' self-regulation. Mother-child dyads (N = 100) completed structured and unstructured dyadic tasks in the laboratory at age 3, and mothers completed child self-regulation measures at age 4. Findings showed that more flexible and contingent affective parent-child processes, as long as the affective content was primarily positive or neutral, predicted higher levels of self-regulation in early childhood. However, when dyads engaged in more negative affective and behavioral content, higher levels of affective and behavioral contingency and behavioral flexibility predicted lower levels of child self-regulation. Findings suggest parent-child coregulation processes play a meaningful role in children's typical regulatory development and that parent-child coregulation patterns can be potentially adaptive or maladaptive for child outcomes depending on the content of the interaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Parental socioeconomic status, adolescents' screen time and sports participation through externalizing and internalizing characteristics

The socioeconomic status of parents is reportedly closely related to the digital screen usage and physical inactivity levels of children and adolescents. Internalizing and externalizing behavior characteristics may be linked to these associations and explain them. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of parents' socioeconomic status (SES) on youths' total screen time along with physical inactivity through internalizing and externalizing behavior characteristics. Thus, we examined associations between parents' socioeconomic status (using scores based on several indicators) and adolescents' total digital screen exposure and physical inactivity level, together with the potentially predicting role of the adolescents' internalizing and externalizing behavior. For this, we assessed the internalizing and externalizing problem characteristics, total screen time exposure, physical inactivity level and parental socioeconomic status of a large cohort sample of Finnish adolescents (the Northern Birth Cohort, 1986 comprised 2899 males and 3059 females). The present study includes data collected in two phases, in 1985–1986 and 2000–2001. Path modeling suggests that a low SES of parents was directly associated with adolescents' physical inactivity level, while externalizing characteristics were a significant and additional contributing factor in adolescents' level of screen exposure in both genders. Gender moderated the relationship between adolescents' internalizing and externalizing characteristics and physical inactivity levels. The results also suggest that parents’ socioeconomic status constitutes a risk factor in relation to media screen exposure only in female adolescents. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Executive Functions and Externalizing Symptoms: Common and Unique Associations

In discussing the four papers in this special issue, we provide our perspective on the authors' contributions and suggest directions for future research. First, we highlight the usefulness of the bi-factor model for investigating relations among specific aspects of executive functions (EFs) and externalizing symptoms. Next, we examine the role of EFs as a protective factor that can moderate the relation between risk factors - specifically, callous-unemotional behaviors - on externalizing symptoms. And finally, we address the contributions of innovative measurement approaches to understanding the relations between EFs and externalizing symptoms, using the state-space grid methodology as an example.

Using State Space Grids for Modeling Temporal Team Dynamics

We outline the potential of dynamics systems theory for researching team processes and highlight how state space grids, as a methodological application rooted in the dynamic systems perspective, can help build new knowledge about temporal team dynamics. Specifically, state space grids visualize the relationship between two categorical variables that are synchronized in time, allowing the (team) researcher to track and capture the emerging structure of social processes. In addition to being a visualization tool, state space grids offer various quantifications of the dynamic properties of the team system. These measures tap into both the content and the structure of the dynamic team system. We highlight the implications of the state space grid technique for team science and discuss research areas that could benefit most from the method. To illustrate the various opportunities of state space grids, we provide an application example based on coded team interaction data. Moreover, we provide a step-by-step tutorial for researchers interested in using the state space grid technique and provide an overview of current software options. We close with a discussion of how researchers and practitioners can use state space grids for team training and team development.

Role of Parenting Style in Children's Behavioral Problems through the Transition from Preschool to Elementary School According to Gender in Japan

While ineffective discipline can be attributed to authoritarian and permissive parenting styles, little research has examined the role of gender in the association between parenting style and early childhood behavioral problems. Thus, this study aimed to clarify the effects of authoritarian and permissive parenting on children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors during the preschool-to-elementary-school transition according to gender in Japan. A sample of 1668 Japanese children (853 boys and 815 girls) were followed longitudinally over one-year intervals, and assessed based on parenting styles (the Parenting Scale), children’s behavioral problems (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire), and family characteristics. Multivariate analyses revealed that, when analyzed by gender, authoritarian discipline influenced externalizing problems in boys (β = 0.048, p = 0.047) and girls (β = 0.067, p = 0.023), while permissive discipline influenced externalizing problems in boys only (β = 0.049, p = 0.038). The results document the relationship between family processes and the development of disruptive behavior disorders in children. Support for parents employing such child-rearing styles in early childhood may be effective in reducing school maladjustment.