Prospective Associations of Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Emotion Dysregulation with Children's Internalizing Problems: The Moderating Role of Fathers.

Parents, including fathers, contribute to the early development of internalizing symptoms, which is observable and prevalent among young children. This longitudinal study examined the moderating role of paternal depressive symptoms/emotion dysregulation in the prospective associations between maternal depressive symptoms/emotion dysregulation and children's internalizing problems (depressive and anxiety symptoms). Ninety-four preschoolers and their mothers and fathers participated. Parents completed online questionnaires when their children were four years old and one year later. Results indicated that higher paternal depressive symptoms were associated with an increase, while lower paternal symptoms were associated with a decrease, in the negative impact of maternal emotion dysregulation on children's later depressive, but not anxiety, symptoms. We also tested the moderating role of paternal emotion dysregulation, these pathways were not significant. The findings enhance our understanding of the interaction between maternal and paternal psychological characteristics in contributing to children's anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Longitudinal Changes in Preschoolers' Self-reported Psychological and Social Problems: Feasibility, Reliability, and Cross-informant Agreement.

For decades, parental report was used to assess children's psychological symptoms and social problems. The Berkeley Puppet Interview (BPI) utilizes hand puppets to collect questionnaire-style data from children, allowing consideration of children's own perspective. The current longitudinal study compared the feasibility and reliability of preschoolers' self-report with BPI at age 4 ( M = 4.03, SD = 0.16; 52% boy, 82% White American) and 5 ( M = 5.22, SD = 0.36; 51% boy, 85% White American) as well as cross-informant agreement among children, mothers (74% above college education), alternate caregivers (> 90% biological fathers), and coders. Children completed symptomatology, social, and parenting scales of BPI and their parents completed surveys assessing similar constructs. Our findings revealed both similarities and changes across ages. Specifically, the reliability and cross-informant agreement of the broad symptomatology and parenting scales were promising at both timepoints; however, 4-year-olds showed lower internal consistency in social scales.

Prospective Associations of Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Emotion Dysregulation with Children's Internalizing Problems: The Moderating Role of Fathers.

The occurrence of internalizing symptoms is prevalent among young children and can be observed as early as preschool years. Using a longitudinal approach, this study examined the moderating role of paternal depressive symptoms/emotion dysregulation in the prospective associations between maternal depressive symptoms/emotion dysregulation and children's internalizing problems (depressive and anxiety symptoms). Ninety-four preschoolers and their mothers and fathers participated in the study. Mothers and fathers completed online questionnaires for all variables when their children were 4 years old and one year later. The results indicated that paternal depressive symptoms moderated the association between maternal emotion dysregulation and children's later depressive, but not anxiety, symptoms. Specifically, higher levels of depressive symptoms in fathers exacerbated the negative influence of maternal emotion dysregulation on children's later depressive symptoms, whereas fathers with low levels of depressive symptoms served a protective role. The findings enhance our understanding of the interaction between maternal and paternal psychological characteristics in contributing to children's anxiety and depressive symptoms.

An integrative framework and recommendations for the study of DNA methylation in the context of race and ethnicity.

Human social epigenomics research is critical to elucidate the intersection of social and genetic influences underlying racial and ethnic differences in health and development. However, this field faces major challenges in both methodology and interpretation with regard to disentangling confounded social and biological aspects of race and ethnicity. To address these challenges, we discuss how these constructs have been approached in the past and how to move forward in studying DNA methylation (DNAm), one of the best-characterized epigenetic marks in humans, in a responsible and appropriately nuanced manner. We highlight self-reported racial and ethnic identity as the primary measure in this field, and discuss its implications in DNAm research. Racial and ethnic identity reflects the biological embedding of an individual's sociocultural experience and environmental exposures in combination with the underlying genetic architecture of the human population (i.e., genetic ancestry). Our integrative framework demonstrates how to examine DNAm in the context of race and ethnicity, while considering both intrinsic factors-including genetic ancestry-and extrinsic factors-including structural and sociocultural environment and developmental niches-when focusing on early-life experience. We reviewed DNAm research in relation to health disparities given its relevance to race and ethnicity as social constructs. Here, we provide recommendations for the study of DNAm addressing racial and ethnic differences, such as explicitly acknowledging the self-reported nature of racial and ethnic identity, empirically examining the effects of genetic variants and accounting for genetic ancestry, and investigating race-related and culturally regulated environmental exposures and experiences. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44155-023-00039-z.

Dynamic, bidirectional influences of children's emotions and maternal regulatory strategies.

The current study examined temporal associations between child emotion and maternal regulatory strategies in mother-child dyads. One hundred and 30 mothers and their 5-year-old children (46.1% boys) completed a challenging puzzle task, which was videotaped. Child positive and negative emotion as well as mothers' regulatory strategies including problem solving, providing approval, and comforting, were coded on a second-by-second basis from the videos. Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to examine how maternal behaviors at a given time predicted the within-dyad variations of child positive and negative emotion 2 seconds later, controlling for the child's own prior emotion, as well as child emotion predicting subsequent maternal behaviors 2 seconds later, controlling for mothers' prior behaviors. In all models, child sex and negative emotionality as well as maternal depressive symptoms were included as between-dyad predictors, whereas maternal race and education were included as covariates. Results suggested that maternal approval and problem solving predicted within-dyad variation in subsequent child positive emotion. Both child positive and negative emotion was predictive of the within-dyad variation in mothers' subsequent use of strategies. Maternal depressive symptoms moderated the relations between prior and subsequent strategy uses for all three maternal behaviors. Our findings indicated that child emotion regulates, and is regulated by, maternal regulatory strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Long-term association of parental warmth with depression and obesity: Mediation by conscientiousness.

OBJECTIVE: The current study examined the psychosocial processes related to the health outcomes of depression and obesity. Specifically, the mediating role of participant's trait conscientiousness on the relation between early experiences of paternal/maternal warmth and later depressive symptoms/obesity across 20 years and how this relationship is moderated by age across adulthood. METHOD: The current study utilized a national longitudinal data set, Midlife in the United States. Participants (N = 2,257) completed a survey rating the warmth they received from their fathers and mothers as children at Time 1 (T1; Ages 25-75). Participants reported their trait conscientiousness 10 years later (Time 2; T2). Depressive symptoms and body mass index were collected 10 years later (Time 3; T3). A moderated mediation model was used to examine whether the effect of parental warmth on health outcomes was mediated by trait conscientiousness and moderated by age. RESULTS: An indirect effect of maternal warmth on depressive symptoms and obesity, mediated by conscientiousness, was found. This effect is moderated by age such that the indirect effect is stronger in older adults. While paternal warmth did not have a significant indirect effect on either depressive symptoms or obesity, the effect was not significantly different from the maternal indirect effect. CONCLUSION: The study supported the role of trait conscientiousness in linking the effect of early parental warmth to later health outcomes. This study also found that the strength of the indirect effect of parental warmth through conscientiousness increases with age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Can the Testing Effect for General Knowledge Facts Be Influenced by Distraction due to Divided Attention or Experimentally Induced Anxious Mood?

Studies on testing effect have showed that a practice test on study materials leads to better performance in a final test than restudying the materials for the same amount of time. Two experiments were conducted to test how distraction, as triggered by divided attention or experimentally induced anxious mood in the practice phase, could modulate the benefit of testing (vs. restudying) on the learning of interesting and boring general knowledge facts. Two individual difference factors (trait test anxiety and working memory (WM) capacity) were measured. Under divided attention, participants restudied or recalled the missing information in visually presented general knowledge facts, while judging whether auditorily presented items were from a pre-specified category. To experimentally induce anxious mood, we instructed participants to view and interpret negative pictures with anxious music background before and during the practice phase. Immediate and two-day delayed tests were given. Regardless of item type (interesting or boring) or retention interval, the testing effect was not significantly affected by divided (vs. full) attention or anxious (vs. neutral) mood. These results remained unchanged after taking into account the influences of participants' trait test anxiety and WM capacity. However, when analyses were restricted to the study materials that had been learnt in the divided attention condition while participants accurately responded to the concurrent distracting task, the testing effect was stronger in the divided attention condition than in the full attention condition. Contrary to previous studies (e.g., Tse and Pu, 2012), there was no WM capacity × trait test anxiety interaction in the overall testing effect. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.