Hidden feelings: Expressive suppression in middle childhood and links with physiology and negative emotion.

A commonly used strategy for regulating emotions, expressive suppression (ES), involves attempts to conceal emotion-expressive behavior. The present study investigated the effects of two types of ES (trait and state) in middle childhood on two domains of functioning-subjective negative emotion (measured by self-report of sadness) and stress physiology (measured by skin conductance level [SCL], an indication of physiological arousal)-in a racially diverse sample. Children ages 9-10 (n = 117; 46% female) self-reported trait ES before coming into the lab, then were randomly assigned to receive instructions to suppress or receive no emotion regulation instructions (control condition) while watching a sad movie scene. SCL and self-reported emotions were measured before and during the movie scene, and children subsequently self-reported how much they had suppressed during the movie scene. Parents and children provided a wide range of additional measures as covariates. Data were collected from 2017 to 2018. Results from multiple regression analyses indicated that higher trait ES predicted greater SCL, but not subjective sadness, during the movie scene. The instructions to suppress did not affect children's subjective sadness or SCL during the movie scene, but self-reported (noninstructed) ES during the movie scene was related to feeling more sadness. Although additional research is needed to generalize findings to other developmental periods, results converge with considerable research on adults and also with a growing number of studies pointing to the potential physiological and emotional correlates of frequent ES during childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Preschoolers' Helping, Sharing, and Comforting: The Moderating Role of Child Attachment.

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) are inconsistently associated with lower rates of child prosocial behavior. Studies typically examine prosocial behavior as a unitary construct rather than examining its multiple dimensions, and rarely consider how the quality of the parent-child relationship could influence this association.Objective: The current study examines whether the security of the parent-child attachment relationship moderates the association between MDS and children's helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors.Method: Participants were 164 low-income, majority African American mothers and their preschool-aged children recruited from Head Start centers. Mothers reported the frequency of depressive symptoms at baseline; child attachment security and helping, sharing, and comforting behavior were observationally assessed 5 to 8 months later.Results: Moderation analyses revealed a positive main effect of security (but not MDS) on children's comforting behavior, a main effect of MDS on sharing, and no main effects of MDS or security on children's helping behaviors. Significant interactions between MDS and security predicted comforting and (marginally) helping behaviors, such that MDS were associated with both more helping and more comforting behavior only when children were more secure. No such interaction was observed for sharing.Conclusions: These findings suggest that children may adapt to maternal depressive symptoms in prosocial ways, but that this depends at least in part on the quality of the parent-child relationship, underscoring the importance of examining attachment quality as a moderator of parental influences on children's social-emotional development. We discuss potential explanations for these findings, as well as their implications for intervention.

Mothers' Attachment Style as a Predictor of Breastfeeding and Room-Sharing Practices.

OBJECTIVE: To prospectively assess breastfeeding and room-sharing practices during the infant's first 6 months and investigate whether mothers' own adult attachment style predicts the initiation and course of these recommended parenting behaviors. METHOD: This study included 193 mother-infant dyads living in the Netherlands. Diary methodology was used to generate 27 weekly measures of breastfeeding and room-sharing during the infant's first 6 months. Multilevel mixed effects models were used to examine trajectories of breastfeeding and room-sharing and to test whether mothers' own adult attachment style predicted the initiation and course of these behaviors, adjusting for covariates. RESULTS: Most (86%) mothers initiated breastfeeding immediately after birth and the rates of breastfeeding declined steadily over the 6 months (b = -2.47, SE = 0.19, p < .001). Mothers with higher attachment avoidance showed faster decreases in breastfeeding than less avoidant mothers (b = -1.07, SE = 0.21, p < .001). Sixty-four percent of mothers engaged in room-sharing after birth which also decreased steadily over the 6 months (b = -3.51, SE = 0.21, p < .001). Mothers' attachment style did not predict the initiation or course of room-sharing. CONCLUSIONS: Given the major implications of breastfeeding and room-sharing for infants' health, safety, and development, the pediatrics community has issued clear guidelines encouraging these behaviors. Yet many new parents do not adhere to the recommended practices. This study identifies mothers' adult attachment style as a predictor of breastfeeding over time that could be incorporated into interventions for parents.

Expressive suppression of negative emotions in children and adolescents: Theory, data, and a guide for future research.

In recent years, an increased interest in the importance of children's ability to regulate emotions in socially adaptive ways has driven considerable research on the development of emotion regulation. A widely studied emotion regulation strategy known as expressive suppression (ES), in which a person attempts to conceal emotion-expressive behavior, has been the focus of several recent studies of child and adolescent emotion regulation. Like much of the literature on children's emotion regulation strategies in general, this literature lacks a theoretical framework for organizing the findings, understanding their implications, and guiding future research (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004). In the present review, we integrate theory and data on ES in childhood and adolescence using the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015), a framework that is widely used in research with adults, to organize and interpret the findings. Specifically, the process model is used to understand what factors contribute to children's use of ES in a given context and when and why ES might be associated with negative emotional, social, cognitive, and physiological costs. We conclude by outlining an agenda for future research, noting major gaps in current knowledge, offering novel ways of thinking about ES in childhood, and highlighting new directions for moving the field forward. Research illuminating the developmental course and correlates of expressive suppression in early life can contribute to a deeper understanding of this emotion regulation strategy and can inform intervention efforts to improve outcomes across the life span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment.

Although attachment theory has long posited a link between early experiences of care and children's prosocial behavior, investigations of this association have not embraced the multifaceted nature of prosociality. This study is the first to assess associations between child attachment and independent observations of helping, sharing, and comforting. Attachment quality in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 137) was linked to all three prosocial behaviors. Additionally, bifactor analyses revealed distinct associations between attachment and children's general prosocial dispositions and their specific abilities to meet the unique challenges of helping and, marginally, comforting. These findings underscore the importance of considering multiple explanations for links between attachment and prosocial behavior and provide novel insights into sources of variation in children's prosociality.

Developmental processes across the first two years of parenthood: Stability and change in adult attachment style.

The first months after becoming a new parent are a unique and important period in human development. Despite substantial research on the many social and biological changes that occur during the first months of parenthood, little is known about changes in mothers' attachment. The present study examines developmental stability and change in first-time mothers' attachment style across the first 2 years of motherhood. At Time 1, 162 economically stressed primiparous mothers (Mage = 23.98 years, SD = 5.18) completed measures of attachment anxiety and avoidance at five time points: when their children were 0, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months of age. Converging results of stability functions and latent growth curve models suggest that attachment styles were generally stable during the first 2 years of motherhood, even in this economically stressed sample. Furthermore, model comparisons revealed that a prototype model better characterized the developmental dynamics of mothers' attachment style than did a revisionist model, consistent with previous studies of adults and adolescents. This suggests that a relatively enduring prototype underlies mothers' attachment style and anchors the extent to which mothers experience attachment-related changes following the birth of their first child. Within this overall picture of continuity, however, some mothers did show change over time, and specific factors emerged as moderators of attachment stability, including maternal depressive symptoms and overall psychological distress, as well as sensitive care from their own mothers. Findings shed light on patterns of continuity and change in new parents' development. (PsycINFO Database Record

Circle of Security-Parenting: A randomized controlled trial in Head Start.

Although evidence shows that attachment insecurity and disorganization increase risk for the development of psychopathology (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, 2010; Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012), implementation challenges have precluded dissemination of attachment interventions on the broad scale at which they are needed. The Circle of Security-Parenting Intervention (COS-P; Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2009), designed with broad implementation in mind, addresses this gap by training community service providers to use a manualized, video-based program to help caregivers provide a secure base and a safe haven for their children. The present study is a randomized controlled trial of COS-P in a low-income sample of Head Start enrolled children and their mothers. Mothers (N = 141; 75 intervention, 66 waitlist control) completed a baseline assessment and returned with their children after the 10-week intervention for the outcome assessment, which included the Strange Situation. Intent to treat analyses revealed a main effect for maternal response to child distress, with mothers assigned to COS-P reporting fewer unsupportive (but not more supportive) responses to distress than control group mothers, and a main effect for one dimension of child executive functioning (inhibitory control but not cognitive flexibility when maternal age and marital status were controlled), with intervention group children showing greater control. There were, however, no main effects of intervention for child attachment or behavior problems. Exploratory follow-up analyses suggested intervention effects were moderated by maternal attachment style or depressive symptoms, with moderated intervention effects emerging for child attachment security and disorganization, but not avoidance; for inhibitory control but not cognitive flexibility; and for child internalizing but not externalizing behavior problems. This initial randomized controlled trial of the efficacy of COS-P sets the stage for further exploration of "what works for whom" in attachment intervention.

Perceptions of parental secure base support in African American adolescents and young adults: A preliminary study of predictive links to adult C-reactive protein.

Within the field of relationship science there is increasing interest in the connections between close relationships and physical health. In the present study, we examined whether adolescents' (~12 years old) and young adults' (~20 years old) perceptions of their parents as a secure base prospectively predict C-reactive protein (CRP), a commonly used marker of inflammatory activity, at age 32 in a well-characterized sample of African Americans. We utilized existing data collected as part of the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS) to construct measures of perceptions of parental secure base support (SBS), general parental support, and peer support in early adolescence and early adulthood. In the present study, SBS was operationalized as the perceived ability to depend on parents in times of need. Fifty-nine African American MADICS participants who reported on perceived support in early adolescence and early adulthood participated in a follow-up home visit at age 32 during which serum CRP was measured via a blood draw. After controlling for inflammation-related confounds (e.g., tobacco use, body mass index), adolescents' perceptions of parental SBS, but not peer support or general parental support, predicted lower CRP values at age 32 (b = -.92, SE = .34, p < .05). None of the support variables in early adulthood predicted CRP at 32 years. This study adds to a growing literature on relationships and health-related outcomes and provides the first evidence for a link between parental SBS in adolescence and a marker of inflammatory activity in adulthood.