Does affirming children's autonomy and prosocial intentions help? A microtrial into intervention component effects to improve psychosocial behavior

Mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between parental disapproval of the child and alexithymic personality

BACKGROUND

Alexithymia is defined as difficulties in identifying, expressing, and understanding emotions. An unapproving environment during childhood is defined as the child not receiving emotional approval from their parents, being punished, or having their emotions devalued. The formation of self-esteem is shaped by the influence of parental behavior during childhood. The communication that the child establishes with their parents contributes to their increased self-esteem and sense of importance. The absence of this may play a role in developmental psychopathology.

AIM

To examine the mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between a disapproving environment in childhood and alexithymia.

METHODS

The research in the relational screening model was conducted with 404 participants. Demographic Information Form, Disapproving Environment Scale in Childhood, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were used as data collection tools. Hayes' bootstrapping technique was used in the analysis of the data obtained from the research.

RESULTS

As a result of the analyses, parental disapproval positively predicted the level of alexithymia (rmother = 0.51, rfather = 0.52, P < 0.05) and negatively predicted self-esteem (rmother = -0.75, rfather = -0.67, P < 0.05). Additionally, self-esteem negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.58, P < 0.05). It was observed that self-esteem had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between parental disapproval and alexithymia. Family types were analyzed separately as chaotic, approving, perfect, and typical. Of these, the chaotic family type positively predicted alexithymia (r = 0.33, P < 0.05) and negatively predicted self-esteem (r = -0.60, P < 0.05). The approving family type negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.43, P < 0.05) and positively predicted self-esteem (r = 0.61, P < 0.05). The perfect family type negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.27, P < 0.05) and positively predicted self-esteem (r = -0.45, P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

The type of family in which the child grows up in and parental disapproval during childhood affected the child's self-esteem and caused alexithymic personality traits.

Psychosocial Competencies Among Clinic-Referred and Community-Based Children: Known-Groups Validity of the Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents (PSICA)

Child psychosocial competencies protect against the development of psychopathology, ameliorate existing psychosocial problems, and predict positive long-term developmental cascades. Assessment of these competencies can improve identification of children in need of psychosocial services, enrich treatment planning, and improve treatment progress and outcome monitoring. Yet, appropriate measures are limited. One promising option is the Psychosocial Strengths Inventory for Children and Adolescents (PSICA), although its discriminative properties were formerly unknown. The present study evaluated the PSICA's sensitivity, specificity, and optimal cutoff scores with 228 youth (38 clinic-referred and 190 community-based youth with case-control matching) ages 2-10 years (Mage = 5.8, 71% boys, 77% White). Results indicated large, significant discrepancies, with clinic-referred youth rated as having less overall psychosocial competence overall and across domains of compliance, prosociality, and attention. Caregivers also reported significantly less satisfaction with the psychosocial competence of clinic-referred versus community youth. Discriminative accuracy of the PSICA's Frequency and Satisfaction scales, and its subscales, were good-to-excellent. Such discriminative accuracy and empirically derived, if preliminary, cutoff scores further support the PSICA as a pragmatic, psychometrically strong tool to screen children for referral into services, and potentiate future investigations into the PSICA's use in treatment planning and evaluation.

Social-emotional need satisfaction, prosocial motivation, and students' positive behavioral and well-being outcomes

This study investigated the extent to which students' social-emotional basic psychological need satisfaction (of social-emotional autonomy, social competence, relatedness with students, and relatedness with teachers) is associated with their prosocial motivation and, in turn, behavioral and emotional well-being outcomes. For motivation, autonomous prosocial motivation and controlled prosocial motivation (by way of introjected and external regulation) were examined. Behavioral outcomes comprised prosocial behavior and conduct problems reported by parents/carers, and emotional well-being were positive and negative affect reported by students. With data from 408 secondary school students (and their parents/carers), structural equation modeling showed that perceived autonomy was associated with lower negative affect. Perceived social competence was associated with greater autonomous prosocial motivation, lower external prosocial regulation, greater positive affect, and lower negative affect. Relatedness with teachers was associated with greater autonomous prosocial motivation. In turn, autonomous prosocial motivation was associated with greater prosocial behavior, whereas external prosocial regulation was associated with lower prosocial behavior. Introjected prosocial regulation was only associated with greater negative affect. The results hold implications for promoting social and emotional competence among students.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11218-022-09691-w.