Longitudinal Patterns in Parent and Friend Emotion Socialization: Associations With Adolescent Emotion Regulation

Developmental trajectories of adolescent internalizing symptoms and parental responses to distress

Parents' responses to their children's negative emotions are a central aspect of emotion socialization that have well-established associations with the development of psychopathology. Yet research is lacking on potential bidirectional associations between parental responses and youth symptoms that may unfold over time. Further, additional research is needed on sociocultural factors that may be related to the trajectories of these constructs. In this study, we examined associations between trajectories of parental responses to negative emotions and adolescent internalizing symptoms and the potential role of youth sex and racial identity. Adolescents and caregivers (N = 256) completed six assessments that spanned adolescent ages 13-18 years. Multivariate growth models revealed that adolescents with higher internalizing symptoms at baseline experienced increasingly non-supportive parental responses over time (punitive and distress responses). By contrast, parental responses did not predict initial levels of or changes in internalizing symptoms. Parents of Black youth reported higher minimization and emotion-focused responses and lower distress responses compared to parents of White youth. We found minimal evidence for sex differences in parental responses. Internalizing symptoms in early adolescence had enduring effects on parental responses to distress, suggesting that adolescents may play an active role in shaping their emotion socialization developmental context.

The link between adolescent girls' interpersonal emotion regulation with parents and peers and depressive symptoms: A real-time investigation

Adolescents often experience heightened socioemotional sensitivity warranting their use of regulatory strategies. Yet, little is known about how key socializing agents help regulate teens' negative emotions in daily life and implications for long-term adjustment. We examined adolescent girls' interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) with parents and peers in response to negative social interactions, defined as parent and peer involvement in the teen's enactment of emotion regulation strategies. We also tested associations between rates of daily parental and peer IER and depressive symptoms, concurrently and one year later. Adolescent girls (N = 112; Mage = 12.39) at temperamental risk for depressive disorders completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment protocol measuring reactivity to negative social interactions, parental and peer IER, and current negative affect. Results indicated that adolescents used more adaptive strategies with peers and more maladaptive strategies with parents in daily life. Both parental and peer IER down-regulated negative affect, reflected by girls' decreased likelihood of experiencing continued negative affect. Higher proportions of parental adaptive IER predicted reduced depressive symptoms one year later. Findings suggest that both parents and peers effectively help adolescent girls down-regulate everyday negative emotions; however, parents may offer more enduring benefits for long-term adjustment.

Adolescent Peer Relationship Difficulties, Prosociality, and Parental Emotion Socialization: Moderating Roles of Adolescent Gender

The present study examined longitudinal, transactional associations between youth social adjustment (prosociality, peer relationship difficulties) and parental emotion socialization in early adolescence. Adolescent gender was considered as a potential moderator. Eighty-seven adolescent-parent dyads (50 girls, 37 boys) participated in 8th grade, with follow-up waves in 9th and 10th grade. Adolescents reported their experiences of peer victimization and their parents' emotion socialization responses, and parents reported youth prosocial behavior and peer relation problems. Hierarchical linear modeling results indicated transactional associations between parent supportive/unsupportive responses and adolescent peer relations and prosociality over time, some of which were moderated by adolescent gender. Increases in parental supportive emotion socialization corresponded to decreased experiences of peer victimization over time for girls, but not boys. When peer victimization increased over time, girls reported less parental supportive responses and all adolescents reported receiving more unsupportive responses from parents. For all adolescents, parents' increased supportive responses also corresponded to decreased peer problems and increased prosocial behavior. As prosocial behavior increased, so did parental supportive responses. Increases in parents' unsupportive responses related to decreased prosocial behavior, and increases in adolescent prosocial behavior related to decreases in parents' unsupportive responses. Results suggest that there is mutual influence between parent emotion socialization and adolescent social adjustment. Adolescent girls appear to uniquely benefit from parents' supportive emotional socialization in relation to their experiences of peer victimization. Potential mechanisms and implications are discussed.

Parental Emotion Socialization of Sadness as a Correlate for Clinical Improvement: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescents with a Range of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury

Engagement in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) often begins in adolescence, and commonly occurs when a person is emotionally dysregulated. Parental emotion socialization (ES) plays a key role in shaping children's emotional expression, experience, and regulation. Longitudinal work is needed to understand how links between parental ES and adolescent clinical outcomes unfold over time. In this longitudinal study (N = 118; all assigned female at birth with a range of NSSI - from none to severe; age 12-17 years, Mage = 14.98 at the first assessment), for the Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) annual assessments; adolescents reported NSSI and adolescents and parents reported depressive symptoms. Parents (primarily mothers) reported on their supportive and unsupportive ES responses to youth expressions of sadness, anger, and happiness. We examined (1) concurrent relationships across time points, (2) longitudinal models (T1 to T2 change in parental ES and its associated T1 to T2 changes in adolescent clinical outcomes), and (3) prediction models (T1 parental ES predicting changes in adolescent clinical outcomes). Concurrent associations between parental supportive ES responses to sadness and anger were inversely related to adolescent's depressive symptoms and NSSI episodes. Longitudinal analyses showed that increases in unsupportive responses to sadness correspond with increases in depressive symptoms from T1 to T2. The findings underscore the importance of examining how parents respond to their children's emotions. Next steps are to investigate potential mechanisms of risk and consider interventions that enhance adaptive responses of parents to adolescents embroiled in negative emotional states.

Emotion-related Processes Between Parents and Adolescents: Evidence for Bidirectional Effects over Time

Parent emotion socialization has long been studied in relation to children's socioemotional adjustment. Little attention has been paid to how parents' socialization responses are shaped by youth characteristics over time, such as emotional lability. The present study explored the mutual influence between parent emotion socialization and adolescent emotional lability. Participants were 87 adolescents (M = 14.23  years old, SD = .50; 50 girls) and their parents, who completed questionnaires at three time points from 8th grade through 10th grade. Hierarchical linear modeling demonstrated mutual influences between parent emotion socialization and adolescent emotional lability, with relations moderated by adolescent gender. Increases in parents' reward of negative emotion predicted decreased emotional lability in girls. Parents' increased magnification of negative emotions corresponded to decreased emotional lability in boys. Boys' increases in emotional lability predicted decreased parental magnification of negative emotions over time. Increases in parents' magnification of negative emotions predicted increased emotional lability in girls. Girls' increases in emotional lability corresponded to increased parental magnification over time. There were no longitudinal effects of adolescent emotional lability on parents' reward, override, and punishment of negative emotions. Future directions and clinical applications are discussed.

Trajectories of Chinese paternal emotion-related socialization behaviors during early adolescence: Contributions of father and adolescent factors

Parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) are developmental and multiply determined. However, longitudinal studies on the development patterns of ERSBs and their antecedents, especially for Chinese fathers, are scarce. This study examined the longitudinal trajectories of Chinese fathers' ERSBs during early adolescence and whether they are influenced by the father (depressive symptoms and emotion dysregulation) and adolescent factors (depressive symptoms and emotional intelligence). We used 4-year, self-reported, survey-based data from Chinese early adolescents (46.70% girls, Mage at Wave 1 = 10.26 years, SD = 0.33) and their fathers (Mage at Wave 1 = 40.36 years, SD = 4.22), and data analyses were conducted using unconditional and conditional latent growth model (N = 1061 at Wave 1). The results revealed an increase in the father's supportive and non-supportive ERSBs over 4 years. Furthermore, father's depression symptoms, emotion dysregulation, and adolescent's depression symptoms can predict paternal supportive ERSBs' trajectories, while only the father's depression symptoms and emotion dysregulation can predict the change in non-supportive ERSBs. The findings give a holistic picture of the developmental trajectories of paternal ERSBs during early adolescence, and highlight the importance of accounting for differences in father and adolescent factors in understanding changes in parental ERSBs during this critical developmental period.

Do Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders Recognize and Adopt Self-Regulation from Peers? – A Qualitative Interview Study

Do Adolescents with Substance Use Disorders Recognize and Adopt Self-Regulation from Peers? - A Qualitative Interview Study Self-regulation often plays a central role for adolescents who develop a substance use disorder, as deficits may trigger the onset of the disease. Likewise, the improvement of self-regulation strategies is an important element of many therapy programs. Additionally, peers are important in the development of substance use disorders.The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of self-regulation by other peers in adolescents with substance use disorders through a qualitative interview study. For this purpose, a total of N = 13 (54 % female) adolescents were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, which were then evaluated using a qualitative content analysis according to Mayring.The results showed that the adolescents were familiar with the concept of self-regulation but did not name the interplay between cognitions, emotions, motivation, and behavior within self-regulation. Furthermore, the adolescents reported having observed and adopted both adaptive and maladaptive self-regulation strategies in others, placing the maladaptive strategies retrospectively before the start of therapy, while the adaptive strategies were rather placed during the therapy phase. This might partly explain the effect that peers pose a risk factor for the development of substance use disorders. However, peers might also be considered as a resource in therapeutic settings.

Parent and Friend Emotion Socialization in Early Adolescence: Their Unique and Interactive Contributions to Emotion Regulation Ability

During early adolescence, parental influence diminishes, whereas friends' influence increases in shaping emotion regulation abilities. However, it is unclear how parents and friends jointly contribute to emotion regulation abilities and how their joint effects vary by gender. This study examines fathers, mothers, and friends as simultaneous emotional socializers and considers the young adolescents' gender. The analysis drew on 438 young Chinese adolescents (55.7% girls, Mage = 11.39, SD = 1.28) who participated in a longitudinal survey over one year. Results showed that parental and friend emotion socialization have both distinct and joint effects. Friends' responses provided a unique contribution to emotion regulation abilities across gender, whereas parents' responses displayed unique contributions among girls. In predicting girls' emotion regulation abilities, mothers' supportive responses explained the additional variance beyond friends' responses, whereas fathers' unsupportive responses moderated the predictive power of friends' responses. These findings clarify emotion-related socialization theories and emphasize the importance of gender specific prevention programs focusing on emotion socialization from both parents and friends in early adolescence.

The role of student-teacher relationships in the association between negative parenting practices and emotion dynamics - Combining longitudinal and ecological momentary assessment data

Emotion dysregulation is increasingly implicated as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the etiology of mental health problems. This project aimed to explore the links between emotion regulation, negative parenting and student-teacher relationships using longitudinal and ecologically valid data. A sample of n = 209 young people enrolled in the 'Decades-to-Minutes' (D2M) study, based in Zurich, Switzerland, provided data from the ages of 7-20 via parent- and self-report questionnaires and ecological momentary assessment. Data were analyzed using Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM). Worse student-teacher relationships predicted increased negative affectivity and emotional lability. Negative parenting practices predicted emotional lability only via their impact on student-teacher relationships. The findings point to worse student-teacher relationships as risk factors in the socioemotional development of children and young people.

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage  = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

Maternal Emotion Dysregulation Predicts Emotion Socialization Practices and Adolescent Emotion Lability: Conditional Effects of Youth ADHD Symptoms

Maternal emotional functioning and emotion socialization practices can facilitate or hinder children's emotional development, and youth with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk for emotion lability. However, little is known about the independent and interactive effects of maternal emotion dysregulation and adolescent ADHD symptoms on maternal emotion socialization and adolescent emotion lability over time. Using secondary data analyses of a longitudinal community sample of youth and their mothers (Nbaseline = 247; 43.7% female), the current study examined direct and indirect effects of maternal emotion dysregulation on adolescent emotion lability via supportive and non-supportive emotion socialization practices as mediators, and the extent to which adolescent ADHD symptoms moderated these longitudinal pathways. Mothers reported on all study constructs. Results showed that non-supportive parenting responses to adolescents' negative emotional expressions partially mediated the association between maternal emotion dysregulation and adolescent emotion lability, and the effect was stronger at higher levels of youth ADHD symptom severity. Results suggest that parent- and youth-level characteristics interact to confer risk for non-supportive emotion socialization practices and adolescent emotion lability. This research contributes uniquely to theory and research on ADHD and emotional functioning across adolescence. Future research should extend this work by utilizing multi-modal assessment.

Longitudinal links between maternal and peer emotion socialization and adolescent girls' socioemotional adjustment

Although research has demonstrated that both parents and peers influence adolescent development, it is not clear whether these relationships also serve as contexts for emotion socialization. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated whether maternal and peer emotion socialization were related to adolescent girls' daily emotions, emotion regulation, and social and emotional adjustment. The sample included 160 adolescent girls from low-income families followed across 2 years. At Time 1 (T1), girls reported on maternal and peer emotion socialization practices during laboratory visits. At Time 2 (T2), girls reported on daily negative and positive affect using ecological momentary assessment across 2 weeks. Emotion regulation, internalizing problems, and prosocial behavior were assessed during laboratory visits at both T1 and 2 years later (Time 3 [T3]). Results demonstrated that higher levels of maternal and peer emotionally supportive socialization practices were associated with lower levels of girls' daily negative affect. Mothers' supportive practices also predicted increases in girls' emotion regulation over time. Both maternal and peer unsupportive practices predicted more internalizing problems, and peer unsupportive practices predicted less prosocial behavior over time. This study supports and expands Eisenberg's heuristic model by demonstrating that both maternal and peer emotion socialization are associated with adolescent girls' emotional and behavioral outcomes, and maternal and peer emotion socialization have differential effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Anorexia Nervosa and a Lost Emotional Self: A Psychological Formulation of the Development, Maintenance, and Treatment of Anorexia Nervosa

In this paper, we argue that Anorexia Nervosa (AN) can be explained as arising from a 'lost sense of emotional self.' We begin by briefly reviewing evidence accumulated to date supporting the consensus that a complex range of genetic, biological, psychological, and socio-environmental risk and maintenance factors contribute to the development and maintenance of AN. We consider how current interventions seek to tackle these factors in psychotherapy and potential limitations. We then propose our theory that many risk and maintenance factors may be unified by an underpinning explanation of emotional processing difficulties leading to a lost sense of 'emotional self.' Further, we discuss how, once established, AN becomes 'self-perpetuating' and the 'lost sense of emotional self' relentlessly deepens. We outline these arguments in detail, drawing on empirical and neuroscientific data, before discussing the implications of this model for understanding AN and informing clinical intervention. We argue that experiential models of therapy (e.g., emotion-focused therapy; schema therapy) be employed to achieve emergence and integration of an 'emotional self' which can be flexibly and adaptively used to direct an individual's needs and relationships. Furthermore, we assert that this should be a primary goal of therapy for adults with established AN.