A dynamic systems account of parental self-regulation processes in the context of challenging child behavior.

To advance the understanding of how parental self-regulation contributes to their role in supporting children's development, this study proposes a model of the dynamic processes involved in parental self-regulation. Based on time-series data from 157 mothers and their 30- to 60-month-old children (49.7% female; 96% White; data collected June 2017-December 2019 in central Pennsylvania, U.S.) during a challenging wait task, the model was tested by examining the temporal relations among challenging child behavior, maternal physiology, and maternal responsiveness. Results were consistent with the hypothesized dynamic negative feedback processes and revealed their associations with the overall quality of parenting behaviors and experiences. Findings elucidate how parents adapt to competing external (attending to child) and internal (restoring parents' equilibrium) demands during parenting challenges.

Describing and Controlling Multivariate Nonlinear Dynamics: A Boolean Network Approach.

We introduce a discrete-time dynamical system method, the Boolean network method, that may be useful for modeling, studying, and controlling nonlinear dynamics in multivariate systems, particularly when binary time-series are available. We introduce the method in three steps: inference of the temporal relations as Boolean functions, extraction of attractors and assignment of desirability based on domain knowledge, and design of network control to direct a psychological system toward a desired attractor. To demonstrate how the Boolean network can describe and prescribe control for emotion regulation dynamics, we applied this method to data from a study of how children use bidding to an adult and/or distraction to regulate their anger during a frustrating task (N = 120, T = 480 seconds). Network control strategies were designed to move the child into attractors where anger is OFF. The sample shows heterogeneous emotion regulation dynamics across children in 22 distinct Boolean networks, and heterogeneous control strategies regarding which behavior to perturb and how to perturb it. The Boolean network method provides a novel method to describe nonlinear dynamics in multivariate psychological systems and is a method with potential to eventually inform the design of interventions that can guide those systems toward desired goals.

Parental Structuring in Response to Toddler Negative Emotion Predicts Children's Later Use of Distraction as a Self-Regulation Strategy for Waiting.

Structuring is a parental response to young children's behavior that may foster children's attempts to use cognitive skills to engage in self-regulation. Using a rural, economically strained sample, parental structuring in response to 127 eighteen-month-olds' negative emotion was observed during a home visit. Children's distraction, a useful cognitive strategy when waiting for a reward, was assessed during a laboratory wait task at 18, 24, 36, and 48 months. More frequent parental structuring at child age 18 months predicted more developmental growth in children's use of distraction between 18 and 48 months, in contrast with parental directives. Consistent with Kopp's (1989) framework, parental structuring may capitalize on children's cognitive development to play a unique role in fostering children's self-regulation of negative emotion.

Toddler dysregulated fear predicts continued risk for social anxiety symptoms in early adolescence.

Identifying early risk factors for the development of social anxiety symptoms has important translational implications. Accurately identifying which children are at the highest risk is of critical importance, especially if we can identify risk early in development. We examined continued risk for social anxiety symptoms at the transition to adolescence in a community sample of children (n = 112) that had been observed for high fearfulness at age 2 and tracked for social anxiety symptoms from preschool through age 6. In our previous studies, we found that a pattern of dysregulated fear (DF), characterized by high fear in low threat contexts, predicted social anxiety symptoms at ages 3, 4, 5, and 6 years across two samples. In the current study, we re-evaluated these children at 11-13 years of age by using parent and child reports of social anxiety symptoms, parental monitoring, and peer relationship quality. The scores for DF uniquely predicted adolescents' social anxiety symptoms beyond the prediction that was made by more proximal measures of behavioral (e.g., kindergarten social withdrawal) and concurrent environmental risk factors (e.g., parental monitoring, peer relationships). Implications for early detection, prevention, and intervention are discussed.

I know that voice! Mothers' voices influence children's perceptions of emotional intensity.

The ability to interpret others' emotions is a critical skill for children's socioemotional functioning. Although research has emphasized facial emotion expressions, children are also constantly required to interpret vocal emotion expressed at or around them by individuals who are both familiar and unfamiliar to them. The current study examined how speaker familiarity, specific emotions, and the acoustic properties that comprise affective prosody influenced children's interpretations of emotional intensity. Participants were 51 7- and 8-year-olds presented with speech stimuli spoken in happy, angry, sad, and nonemotional prosodies by both each child's mother and another child's mother unfamiliar to the target child. Analyses indicated that children rated their own mothers as more intensely emotional compared with the unfamiliar mothers and that this effect was specific to angry and happy prosodies. Furthermore, the acoustic properties predicted children's emotional intensity ratings in different patterns for each emotion. The results are discussed in terms of the significance of the mother's voice in children's development of emotional understanding.

Emotion dysregulation as a dynamic process.

In this article we adopt the view that emotion dysregulation is characterized by emotion regulation dynamics that are defined as dysfunctional based on contextual criteria. We regard the construct of emotion regulation as valuable because it permits the integration of the classic view of emotions as interfering with human functioning and contemporary views of emotion as adaptive and beneficial. To define patterns that reflect emotion dysregulation, we explain our views of emotion as a dynamic process, and emotion regulation as the bidirectional interplay between emotions and actions/thoughts (extrinsic factors) and the contextual factors that constitute the criteria for that interplay reflecting dysregulation. This conceptualization of emotion regulation and dysregulation leads to methods for studying the intrinsic dynamics of emotion, extrinsic factors that change the intrinsic dynamics of emotion, and how emotion regulation changes over time at multiple time scales. We then apply this thinking to several emotion dysregulation patterns. Emotion regulation is a complex construct, embracing emotion as regulator and as regulated, as self- and other-regulated, and as incorporating both top-down and bottom-up regulatory processes. We highlight an emerging line of research on the development of emotion regulation in early childhood and indicate how this work can inform understanding of emotion dysregulation and the emergence of psychopathology.

Sequences of toddler negative emotion and parent-toddler verbal communication during a waking day.

Although the second year of life is characterized by dramatic changes in expressive language and by increases in negative emotion expression, verbal communication and emotional communication are often studied separately. With a sample of twenty-five one-year-olds (12-23 months), we used Language Environment Analysis (LENA; Xu, Yapanel, & Gray, 2009, Reliability of the LENA™ language environment analysis system in young children's natural home environment. LENA Foundation) to audio-record and quantify parent-toddler communication, including toddlers' vocal negative emotion expressions, across a full waking day. Using a multilevel extension of lag-sequential analysis, we investigated whether parents are differentially responsive to toddlers' negative emotion expressions compared to their verbal or preverbal vocalizations, and we examined the effects of parents' verbal responses on toddlers' subsequent communicative behavior. Toddlers' negative emotions were less likely than their vocalizations to be followed by parent speech. However, when negative emotions were followed by parent speech, toddlers were most likely to vocalize next. Post hoc analyses suggest that older toddlers and toddlers with higher language abilities were more likely to shift from negative emotion to verbal or preverbal vocalization following parent response. Implications of the results for understanding the parent-toddler communication processes that support both emotional development and verbal development are discussed.

Age-related changes in the dynamics of fear-related regulation in early childhood.

Self-regulation is a dynamic process wherein executive processes (EP) delay, minimize or desist prepotent responses (PR) that arise in situations that threaten well-being. It is generally assumed that, over the course of early childhood, children expand and more effectively deploy their repertoire of EP-related strategies to regulate PR. However, longitudinal tests of these assumptions are scarce in part because self-regulation has been mostly studied as a static construct. This study engages dynamic systems modeling to examine developmental changes in self-regulation between ages 2 and 5 years. Second-by-second time-series data derived from behavioral observations of 112 children (63 boys) faced with novel laboratory-based situations designed to elicit wariness, hesitation, and fear were modeled using differential equation models designed to capture age-related changes in the intrinsic dynamics and bidirectional coupling of PR (fear/wariness) and EP (strategy use). Results revealed that dynamic models allow for the conceptualization and measurement of fear regulation as intrinsic processes as well as direct and indirect coupling between PR and EP. Several patterns of age-related changes were in line with developmental theory suggesting that PR weakened and was regulated more quickly and efficiently by EP at age 5 than at age 2. However, most findings were in the intrinsic dynamics and moderating influences between PR and EP rather than direct influences. The findings illustrate the precision with which specific aspects of self-regulation can be articulated using dynamic systems models, and how such models can be used to describe the development of self-regulation in nuanced and theoretically meaningful ways.

Child language and parenting antecedents and externalizing outcomes of emotion regulation pathways across early childhood: A person-centered approach.

Decreases in children's anger reactivity because of the onset of their autonomous use of strategies characterizes the prevailing model of the development of emotion regulation in early childhood (Kopp, 1989). There is, however, limited evidence of the varied pathways that mark this development and their proposed antecedents and consequences. This study used a person-centered approach to identify such pathways, antecedents, and outcomes. A sample of 120 children from economically strained rural and semirural households were observed while waiting to open a gift at ages 24, 36, and 48 months. Multitrajectory modeling of children's anger expressions and strategy use yielded three subgroups. As they aged, typically developing children's strategy use (calm bids and focused distraction) increased while anger expressions decreased. Later developing children, though initially elevated in anger expression and low in strategy use, demonstrated marked growth across indicators and did not differ from typically developing children at 48 months. At-risk children, despite developing calm bidding skills, did not display longitudinal self-distraction increases or anger expression declines. Some predicted antecedents (12-24 month child language skills and language-capitalizing parenting practices) and outcomes (age 5 years externalizing behavior) differentiated pathways. Findings illustrate how indicator-specific departures from typical pathways signal risk for behavior problems and point to pathway-specific intervention opportunities.

Developmental change in emotion expression in frustrating situations: The roles of context and gender.

Emotion expression is a central aspect of social-emotional functioning. Theorists assert that emotion expression undergoes significant changes in the preschool period. There is, however, limited observational evidence of those changes, which may vary by interpersonal context and gender. The present longitudinal study examined developmental changes in emotion expressions from ages 3 to 5 years in 120 children from rural economically strained families. Children's facial, vocal, and postural sadness, anger, and happiness expressions were observed in frustrating tasks in 3 social contexts (a perfect circles task with an experimenter, a toy wait task with mother, a locked box task when alone). Findings indicted that sadness expressions decreased with age in all 3 contexts. Anger expressions increased with age in the frustrating task with the experimenter and when alone but not with the mother. From age 4 to 5 years, happiness expressions decreased in the task with experimenter but increased when alone and increased marginally with mother. In terms of gender, girls expressed greater happiness (and lower sadness) than boys but only in the task with the experimenter. Findings suggest that sadness expressions decrease over the preschool years. Developmental changes in happiness and anger expressions (and gender differences) likely depend on context.

Assessing Biobehavioural Self-Regulation and Coregulation in Early Childhood: The Parent-Child Challenge Task.

Researchers have argued for more dynamic and contextually relevant measures of regulatory processes in interpersonal interactions. In response, we introduce and examine the effectiveness of a new task, the Parent-Child Challenge Task, designed to assess the self-regulation and coregulation of affect, goal-directed behavior, and physiology in parents and their preschoolers in response to an experimental perturbation. Concurrent and predictive validity was examined via relations with children's externalizing behaviors. Mothers used only their words to guide their 3-year-old children to complete increasingly difficult puzzles in order to win a prize (N = 96). A challenge condition was initiated mid-way through the task with a newly introduced time limit. The challenge produced decreases in parental teaching and dyadic behavioral variability and increases in child negative affect and dyadic affective variability, measured by dynamic systems-based methods. Children rated lower on externalizing showed respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) suppression in response to challenge, whereas those rated higher on externalizing showed RSA augmentation. Additionally, select task changes in affect, behavior, and physiology predicted teacher-rated externalizing behaviors four months later. Findings indicate the Parent-Child Challenge Task was effective in producing regulatory changes and suggest its utility in assessing biobehavioral self-regulation and coregulation in parents and their preschoolers.

A Comparison of Two-Stage Approaches for Fitting Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equation Models with Mixed Effects.

Several approaches exist for estimating the derivatives of observed data for model exploration purposes, including functional data analysis (FDA; Ramsay & Silverman, 2005 ), generalized local linear approximation (GLLA; Boker, Deboeck, Edler, & Peel, 2010 ), and generalized orthogonal local derivative approximation (GOLD; Deboeck, 2010 ). These derivative estimation procedures can be used in a two-stage process to fit mixed effects ordinary differential equation (ODE) models. While the performance and utility of these routines for estimating linear ODEs have been established, they have not yet been evaluated in the context of nonlinear ODEs with mixed effects. We compared properties of the GLLA and GOLD to an FDA-based two-stage approach denoted herein as functional ordinary differential equation with mixed effects (FODEmixed) in a Monte Carlo (MC) study using a nonlinear coupled oscillators model with mixed effects. Simulation results showed that overall, the FODEmixed outperformed both the GLLA and GOLD across all the embedding dimensions considered, but a novel use of a fourth-order GLLA approach combined with very high embedding dimensions yielded estimation results that almost paralleled those from the FODEmixed. We discuss the strengths and limitations of each approach and demonstrate how output from each stage of FODEmixed may be used to inform empirical modeling of young children's self-regulation.

Adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems predict their affect-specific HPA and HPG axes reactivity.

We examined psychopathology-neuroendocrine associations in relation to the transition into adolescence within a developmental framework that acknowledged the interdependence of the HPA and HPG hormone systems in the regulation of responses to everyday affective contexts. Saliva samples were collected during anxiety and anger inductions from 51 young adolescents (M 13.47, SD = .60 years) to evaluate cortisol, DHEA, and testosterone responses. Internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed at pre-adolescence (M = 9.27, SD = .58 years) while youths were in elementary school and concurrently with hormones in early adolescence. Externalizing problems from elementary school predicted adolescents' reduced DHEA reactivity during anxiety induction. Follow up analyses simultaneously examining the contributions of elementary school and adolescent problems showed a trend suggesting that youths with higher levels of internalizing problems during elementary school eventuated in a profile of heightened DHEA reactivity as adolescents undergoing anxiety induction. For both the anxiety and the anger inductions, it was normative for DHEA and testosterone to be positively coupled. Adolescents with high externalizing problems but low internalizing problems marshaled dual axes co-activation during anger induction in the form of positive cortisol-testosterone coupling. This is some of the first evidence suggesting affective context determines whether dual axes coupling is reflective of normative or problematic functioning in adolescence.

Transactional Patterns of Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Mother-Child Mutual Negativity in an Adoption Sample.

Transactional models of analysis can examine both moment-to-moment interactions within a dyad and dyadic patterns of influence across time. This study used data from a prospective adoption study to test a transactional model of parental depressive symptoms and mutual negativity between mother and child over time, utilizing contingency analysis of second-by-second behavioral data. To consider both genetic and environmental influences on mutual negativity, depressive symptoms were examined in both adoptive and birth mothers. Adoptive mother depressive symptoms at 9 months increased the likelihood that, at 18 months, children reacted negatively to their mothers' negative behavior, which in turn predicted higher levels of adoptive mother depressive symptoms at 27 months, suggesting that over time, mothers' depressive symptoms influence and are influenced by moment-to-moment mutual negativity with their toddlers. Birth mother depressive symptoms moderated the association between mutual negativity at 18 months and adoptive mother depressive symptoms at 27 months, suggesting a child-driven contribution to maternal depressive symptoms that can be measured by a genetic sensitivity.

Toddler negative affectivity and effortful control: Relations with parent-toddler conversation engagement and indirect effects on language.

Evidence that early parent-child conversation supports early language development suggests a need to understand factors that account for individual differences in parent-child conversation engagement. Whereas most studies focus on demographic factors, we investigated the role of toddler temperament in a longitudinal study of 120 economically strained families. Specifically, we investigated the degree to which toddlers' negative affectivity and effortful control, considered together as a composite reflecting challenging temperament, accounted for variability in parent-toddler conversation engagement, and whether the frequency of that engagement mediated associations between toddler temperament and toddler expressive language skills. Toddler challenging temperament (i.e., high negative affectivity and low effortful control) and parent-toddler conversation engagement were measured at 18 and 30 months. Toddler expressive language skills were measured at 18, 24, and 36 months. As expected, a path model indicated inverse relations between toddler challenging temperament and concurrent parent-toddler conversation engagement at both 18 and 30 months. Unexpectedly, there were no direct associations between toddler challenging temperament and toddler expressive language skills either concurrently or longitudinally. However, we found indirect effects of toddler challenging temperament on later toddler expressive language skills via parent-toddler conversation engagement. Findings highlight the importance of considering toddler temperamental characteristics in addition to family demographics as important factors that account for variability in parent-toddler conversation engagement.

Longitudinal relations among language skills, anger expression, and regulatory strategies in early childhood.

Researchers have suggested that as children's language skill develops in early childhood, it comes to help children regulate their emotions (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010; Kopp, 1989), but the pathways by which this occurs have not been studied empirically. In a longitudinal study of 120 children from 18 to 48 months of age, associations among child language skill, observed anger expression, and regulatory strategies during a delay task were examined. Toddlers with better language skill, and whose language skill increased more over time, appeared less angry at 48 months and their anger declined more over time. Two regulatory strategies, support seeking and distraction, explained a portion of the variance in the association between language skill and anger expression after toddlerhood.

The role of strategy-use and parasympathetic functioning in maternal emotion regulation.

Research has recognized that parental emotion regulation influences whether parents respond sensitively to their children in challenging parenting situations. However, parental emotion regulation is usually assessed using questionnaires that are not about parenting, rather than through examining parents' reaction to specific parenting situations that might evoke negative emotions. This study investigates individual differences in mothers' emotion regulation during parenting, specifically examining the relation between their subjective negative emotions and observed parenting behaviors and whether this relation is moderated by cognitive (strategies to manage negative emotions) and physiological (resting baseline and reactivity of respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) processes. Data of 157 mothers' self-reported negative emotions and strategy-use, their RSA, observed maternal responsiveness, and their preschool-age children's (30-60 months, 49.7% female) challenging behaviors were collected during a Wait Task, in which mothers told children to wait before opening an appealing gift. Regression analysis indicated that, after controlling for how challenging children were, mothers' level of negative emotion was not associated with observed level of maternal responsiveness. In line with hypotheses, the association was moderated by mothers' resting RSA and the extent to which they suppressed negative emotions. However, contrary to hypotheses, the association was not moderated by use of reappraisal, distraction, or rumination, or RSA reactivity. The significant findings suggest that, although mothers' subjective experiences of negative emotions are not necessarily related to less responsive parenting behaviors, the link between maternal emotions and parenting behavior may indicate differences in how mothers engage cognitive strategies as well as their physiological regulation capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating the developmental timing of self-regulation in early childhood.

Self-regulation often refers to the executive influence of cognitive resources to alter prepotent responses. The ability to engage cognitive resources as a form of executive process emerges and improves in the preschool-age years while the dominance of prepotent responses, such as emotional reactions, begins to decline from toddlerhood onward. However, little direct empirical evidence addresses the timing of an age-related increase in executive processes and a decrease in age-related prepotent responses over the course of early childhood. To address this gap, we examined children's individual trajectories of change in prepotent responses and executive processes over time. At four age points (24 months, 36 months, 48 months, and 5 years), we observed children (46% female) during a procedure in which mothers were busy with work and told their children they had to wait to open a gift. Prepotent responses included children's interest in and desire for the gift and their anger about the wait. Executive processes included children's use of focused distraction, which is the strategy considered optimal for self-regulation in a waiting task. We examined individual differences in the timing of age-related changes in the proportion of time spent expressing a prepotent response and engaging executive processes using a series of nonlinear (generalized logistic) growth models. As hypothesized, the average proportion of time children expressed prepotent responses decreased with age, and the average proportion of time engaged in executive processes increased with age. Individual differences in the developmental timing of changes in prepotent responses and executive process were correlated r = .35 such that the timing of decrease in proportion of time expressing prepotent responses was coupled with the timing of increase in proportion of time engaging executive processes.

Let Me Go: The Influences of Crawling Experience and Temperament on the Development of Anger Expression.

Infants' emerging ability to move independently by crawling is associated with changes in multiple domains, including an increase in expressions of anger in situations that block infants' goals, but it is unknown whether increased anger is specifically because of experience with being able to move autonomously or simply related to age. To examine the influence of locomotion on developmental change in anger, infants' (N = 20) anger expressions during an arm restraint procedure were observed longitudinally at a precrawling baseline assessment and 2 and 6 weeks after the onset of crawling. Infant age at each crawling stage was unrelated to the frequency of anger expressed in response to arm restraint. At 6 weeks postcrawling onset, infants whose mothers rated them as temperamentally higher in distress to limitations, compared with those rated lower, showed a greater increase in the frequency of anger expressed during the arm restraint relative to earlier assessments and took longer to reduce the frequency of anger expressed when no longer restrained. Findings suggest that experience with autonomous crawling has an effect on anger expression, independent of age, and that a temperamental tendency to become distressed by limitations may exacerbate the effect of crawling on anger expression.

Mothers' affect dysregulation, depressive symptoms, and emotional availability during mother-infant interaction.

Maternal affect dysregulation and maternal depressive symptoms were examined as predictors of maternal emotional availability (EA) during mother-infant interaction in a nonclinical sample. In particular, we investigated if affect dysregulation predicts EA and is more important than are depressive symptoms in predicting EA. Questionnaire measures and 30 min of free play were obtained from 46 mothers of 4- to 5-month-old infants. Mothers' self-reported affect dysregulation was inversely related to EA, but mothers' depressive symptoms were not related to EA. More specifically, mothers' tendency to use unhealthy externalizing behaviors to reduce tension and distress predicted less EA. These results suggested that even in relatively low-risk samples, mothers' self-reported affect dysregulation, particularly the tendency to act out inappropriately in response to tension and distress, may be a more proximal predictor of EA than are depressive symptoms.