The Structure of Emotion Dialogues: Maternal Reminiscing Factors Differentially Relate to Child Language and Socio-Emotional Outcomes.

Mother-child reminiscing about past emotional experiences is one aspect of emotion socialization that facilitates child socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes. To advance understanding of the multidimensional nature of this clinically significant transdiagnostic process, the current investigation examined the structure of maternal reminiscing and how emergent factors related to child outcomes across two diverse samples (total N = 337). Sample one included 102 mothers and their preschool-aged children from community agencies, and sample two included 235 mothers and their preschool-aged children, the majority of whom had experienced substantiated maltreatment. Dyads completed a reminiscing task coded for multiple aspects of maternal reminiscing style (frequency and scale-based coding), assessments of child receptive language and internalizing and externalizing problems, and measures of parenting. Factor analyses confirmed that maternal reminiscing was best defined by three factors: (1) structural elaborations, (2) emotional attributions, and (3) sensitive guidance, and this three-factor structure was invariant across samples, maltreatment, maternal race, and child sex. When controlling for other dimensions of caregiver-reported parenting behavior, reminiscing sensitive guidance was significantly positively associated with child language and negatively with child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In contrast, emotional elaborations were associated with higher child internalizing concerns. When controlling for caregiver-reported parenting and observed maternal sensitivity, structural elaborations negatively and emotional attributions positively related to child internalizing symptoms, whereas reminiscing factors did not significantly predict child externalizing symptoms nor child language. Distinct aspects of maternal reminiscing behavior are differentially related to child outcomes. Limitations and implications for understanding and measuring emotion socialization interactions are discussed.

Longitudinal Effects of Reminiscing and Emotion Training on Child Maladjustment in the Context of Maltreatment and Maternal Depressive Symptoms.

Exposure to child maltreatment and maternal depression are significant risk factors for the development of psychopathology. Difficulties in caregiving, including poor emotion socialization behavior, may mediate these associations. Thus, enhancing supportive parent emotion socialization may be a key transdiagnostic target for preventive interventions designed for these families. Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET) is a brief relational intervention designed to improve maternal emotion socialization behavior by enhancing maltreating mothers' sensitive guidance during reminiscing with their young children. This study evaluated associations between maltreatment, maternal depressive symptoms, and the RET intervention with changes in children's maladjustment across one year following the intervention, and examined the extent to which intervention-related improvement in maternal emotion socialization mediated change in children's maladjustment. Participants were 242 children (aged 36 to 86 months) and their mothers from maltreating (66%) and nonmaltreating (34%) families. Results indicated that RET intervention-related improvement in maternal sensitive guidance mediated the effects of RET on reduced child maladjustment among maltreated children one year later. By comparison, poor sensitive guidance mediated the effects of maltreatment on higher child maladjustment among families that did not receive the RET intervention. Direct effects of maternal depressive symptoms on child maladjustment were also observed. This suggests RET is effective in facilitating emotional and behavioral adjustment in maltreated children by improving maltreating mothers' emotional socialization behaviors.

Child diurnal cortisol differs based on profiles of maternal emotion socialization in high risk, low income, and racially diverse families.

Young children's physiological and emotional regulation depend on supportive caregiving, especially in the context of stress and adversity. Experiences of child maltreatment become biologically embedded by shaping stress physiology. Maternal emotion socialization may have an important influence on children's limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (LHPA) functioning. Grounded in theories of caregiver emotion socialization, a person-centered latent profile analysis was utilized to identify profiles of maternal emotion socialization among a high risk, low income, and racially diverse group of 248 mothers and their young children (Mage  = 4.39 years, SD = 1.10). The majority of the mothers (n = 165) had a history of involvement with the Department of Child Services for substantiated cases of child maltreatment. A latent profile analysis was conducted revealing three emotion socialization profiles: disengaged, engaged, and engaged + supportive. Emotion socialization profile differences in children's diurnal cortisol levels and slope (using area under the curve with respect to ground and increase, respectively) were examined. Children's diurnal cortisol levels were higher, and slopes were flatter, when mothers used more disengaged emotion socialization strategies. Mothers who neglected their children were more likely to fit the disengaged profile than the engaged profile. Implications for the socialization of regulation in children exposed to adversity are discussed.

Longitudinal effects of maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and Reminiscing and Emotion Training on children's diurnal cortisol regulation.

Dysregulation in children's physiological stress systems is a key process linking early adversity to poor health and psychopathology. Thus, interventions that improve children's stress physiology may help prevent deleterious health outcomes. Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET) is a brief relational intervention designed to improve maternal caregiving support by enhancing maltreating mothers' capacity to reminisce with their young children. This study evaluated associations between maltreatment, intimate partner violence, and the RET intervention with changes in children's diurnal cortisol regulation across the 1 year following the intervention, and the extent to which improvements in maternal elaborative reminiscing differed between intervention groups and mediated change in children's physiological functioning. Participants were 237 children (aged 36 to 86 months) and their mothers. Results indicated that the RET intervention was associated with significant positive change in elaborative reminiscing, which was sustained over time. Mothers' elaboration immediately after the intervention served as a mediator of RET's effects on improvements in children's diurnal cortisol regulation (steeper diurnal slopes) from baseline to 1 year following intervention. This suggests RET is effective in facilitating physiological regulation among maltreated children.

Emotion Socialization and Developmental Risk: Interactive Effects of Receptive Language and Maltreatment on Reminiscing.

OBJECTIVES: Emotional reminiscing, or mother-child discussion of past emotional experiences, is a critical aspect of emotion socialization that predicts a range of child outcomes and is central to parent-child interventions. Thus, understanding individual differences in emotional reminiscing will advance our ability to identify families at-risk for poor emotion dialogues and to adapt interventions for diverse populations, such as families affected by maltreatment and mothers and children with low language abilities. The present study examined associations among maternal and child receptive language with emotional reminiscing and the moderating role of maltreatment. METHODS: Two hundred and twenty three underserved, racially diverse mothers (144 maltreating) and their preschool aged children completed measures of receptive language (PPVT-4). Emotional reminiscing was comprehensively measured using maternal report and observations of emotion dialogues, including ratings of elaborations, maternal sensitive guidance, and child cooperative exploration. RESULTS: Child language was positively associated with all observed aspects of child reminiscing, and the association between child language and maternal reminiscing was moderated by maltreatment. For non-maltreating families, child language was positively associated with maternal factual elaborations and sensitive guidance. For the maltreating families, these associations were not significant, demonstrating that maltreatment disrupted the association between child language and reminiscing. Maternal language was significantly associated with maternal report of emotion dismissing behaviors, regardless of maltreatment status. CONCLUSIONS: Results highlight that language is an essential individual difference factor contributing to variance in emotion dialogues, and that maltreatment influences how child language relates to reminiscing. Future directions and clinical implications for families affected by developmental risk are considered.

Intimate partner violence and maltreated preschoolers' internal representations of conflict.

Family violence, including intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment, has detrimental consequences across the life span. Robust evidence from families experiencing relatively normative conflict demonstrates the central role of children's internal representations, or beliefs and expectations of relationships, on children's adjustment. The current investigation examines children's implicit internal representations of interadult conflict among families experiencing IPV and child maltreatment. Maltreated (n = 132) and nonmaltreated (n = 82) preschoolers (Mage = 4.93 years, SD = 1.11) completed a narrative story-stem completion task in which they were asked to generate narrative endings to interadult conflicts. Narratives were coded for constructive conflict resolutions, dysregulated destructive behaviors, and the proliferation of interadult aggression toward the child. Mothers reported the frequency of IPV and constructive conflict between themselves and their partners within the past year. The potential additive and interactive effects of IPV, constructive conflict, and child maltreatment on children's internal representations of conflict behaviors were examined. The narratives of maltreated children depicted more constructively resolved conflict as interadult constructive conflict tactics increased. Maltreated and nonmaltreated children did not differ in their representations of conflict resolution at high levels of constructive conflict tactics. Maltreatment was positively associated with representations of dysregulated destructive behaviors and conflict spread to the parent-child relationship. IPV was positively associated with representations of conflict spread. Constructive conflict, in turn, was negatively associated with conflict spread. The findings highlight the importance of the multiple expressions of family conflict and violence on children's implicit internal representations of conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Elaborative Reminiscing and Child Receptive Language in the Context of Maltreatment: The Moderating Role of Maternal Sensitivity.

This study investigated whether the effect of maternal elaborative reminiscing on child language is moderated by maternal sensitivity and whether this association depends on children's experience of maltreatment. A total of 236 mothers and their 3- to 7-year-old children (mean age = 5 years) were observed interacting with experimenter-provided toys in the lab and at home, and maternal sensitivity was coded from these interactions. Of that, 155 of the children had a history of maltreatment with the mother being named a perpetrator, and the remaining dyads were demographically matched with no history of maltreatment. Dyads were also asked to discuss four past emotional events, and these conversations were coded for maternal elaborative reminiscing. Children and mothers participated in an assessment of receptive language. Findings revealed an unqualified positive main effect of elaborative reminiscing on children's receptive language in the nonmaltreating families. However, for maltreated children, elaborative reminiscing was only associated with higher child receptive language when mothers were also more sensitive. These findings indicate that, in the context of maltreatment, both elaborative reminiscing and more general aspects of the quality of the parent-child relationship are important for facilitating child receptive language.

Maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing in the context of child maltreatment: Implications for child self-regulatory processes.

The manner in which mothers engage in emotional discussion, or reminisce, with their young children about past emotional experiences poses important ramifications for child socioemotional and cognitive development. Maltreating mothers may have difficulty engaging in emotionally supportive reminiscing. The current study examined the role of maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing as a process variable that may explain associations between child maltreatment and 3 child self-regulatory dimensions: lability/negativity, emotion regulation, and inhibitory control. Participants included 111 maltreating and 65 demographically matched, nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 176). The dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about 4 past emotional shared experiences. Mothers reported on their children's emotion regulation and lability/negativity while children participated in a behavioral assessment of inhibitory control. Results indicated that maltreating mothers engaged in less sensitive guidance when reminiscing compared with nonmaltreating mothers. In the main analysis, maternal sensitive guidance mediated relations between maltreatment and child emotion regulation and inhibitory control, respectively, but not lability/negativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Adherence to Diurnal Cortisol Sampling Among Mother-Child Dyads From Maltreating and Nonmaltreating Families.

There has been increasing interest in evaluating whether interventions for child maltreatment can improve and/or prevent child physiological dysregulation via measurement of diurnal cortisol. The assessment of diurnal cortisol typically involves the home-based collection of saliva multiple times per day, bringing forth important methodological considerations regarding adherence to collection instructions. To date, there has been no data regarding adherence to home collection of diurnal cortisol among maltreating families. The current study provides data on adherence to in-home sampling of salivary cortisol among 166 maltreating and demographically similar nonmaltreating mother-child dyads using electronic monitoring devices (Medication Event Monitoring System caps). Mothers collected saliva samples on themselves and their children 3 times per day (waking, midday, and evening) for 2 consecutive days. Analyses reveal that although maltreating families were more likely to be nonadherent to the collection protocol on their initial attempt, with additional support and resampling, maltreating and nonmaltreating families were comparable on most measures of adherence. Suggestions for best practices, including the use of electronic monitoring devices, for diurnal cortisol collection with maltreating families are provided.