Family-level Antecedents of Children\u27s Patterns of Reactivity to Interparental Conflict: Testing the Reformulation of Emotional Security Theory

Guided by emotional security theory, this study examined the family-level antecedents of children\u27s reaction patterns to interparental conflict in a sample of 243 preschool children (M age = 4.60 years; 48% Black; 16% Latinx; 56% girls) and their parents in the Northeastern United States. Behavioral observations of children\u27s responses to interparental conflict over two annual measurement occasions assessed their tendencies to exhibit four patterns of defending against threat: secure (i.e., efficiently address direct threats), mobilizing (i.e., high reactivity to potential threat and social opportunities), dominant (i.e., directly defeat threat), and demobilizing (i.e., reduce salience as a target of hostility). Latent profile analyses of interparental, coparental, and parent characteristics derived from multiple methods at the first wave yielded four profiles corresponding with harmonious, enmeshed, compensatory, and detouring patterns of family-level functioning. Additional analyses revealed that children in harmonious and compensatory family profiles exhibited more secure patterns of reactivity over a 1-year period than children in the enmeshed family profile. In contrast, subsequent mobilizing reactivity was most pronounced for children in the enmeshed family profile. Finally, children in the detouring profile exhibited substantially higher levels of demobilizing reactivity to interparental conflict. Results are discussed in the context of how they inform and refine emotional security theory

How does noise impact speech-based emotion classification?

Emotion classification, Support vector machine, Thresholding fusion, Noisy speechPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Enhanced multiclass SVM with thresholding fusion for speech-based emotion classification

As an essential approach to understanding human interactions, emotion classification is a vital component of behavioral studies as well as being important in the design of context-aware systems. Recent studies have shown that speech contains rich information about emotion, and numerous speech-based emotion classification methods have been proposed. However, the classification performance is still short of what is desired for the algorithms to be used in real systems. We present an emotion classification system using several one-against-all support vector machines with a thresholding fusion mechanism to combine the individual outputs, which provides the functionality to effectively increase the emotion classification accuracy at the expense of rejecting some samples as unclassified. Results show that the proposed system outperforms three state-of-the-art methods and that the thresholding fusion mechanism can effectively improve the emotion classification, which is important for applications that require very high accuracy but do not require that all samples be classified. We evaluate the system performance for several challenging scenarios including speaker-independent tests, tests on noisy speech signals, and tests using non-professional acted recordings, in order to demonstrate the performance of the system and the effectiveness of the thresholding fusion mechanism in real scenarios.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Transactions Within the Family: Coparenting Mediates Associations Between Parents\u27 Relationship Satisfaction and the Parent-Child Relationship

In the current study, we examined the potential for transactional relations among parents’ marital satisfaction, coparental cooperation and conflict, and parent–child relationship satisfaction in a sample of 249 families with 2–3-year-old children. Using a novel multiwave design with frequent assessments to better capture transactional family processes, mothers and fathers were assessed across 5 waves with 2-month lags; mean age of the target children (53% girls) was 2.8 years (SD = 0.62) at baseline. Cross-lagged, multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses using an actor–partner interdependence modeling framework revealed coparental cooperation and conflict as likely mechanisms within the family system. Specifically, marital satisfaction from both parents was reciprocally linked to fathers’ coparental cooperation over time, supporting transactional links between those two family subsystems. In addition, there were significant transactional links between both mothers’ and fathers’ coparental cooperation and father-reported parent–child relationship satisfaction across time, revealing within-parent and cross-parent mediation. Regarding coparental conflict, marital satisfaction from both parents was reciprocally linked to the same parents’ reports of coparental conflict across time (i.e., actor effects). Furthermore, father-reported coparental conflict acted as a mediating or intervening mechanism between father-reported marital satisfaction and mother-reported parent–child relationship satisfaction (cross-parent mediation). Taken as a set, the findings supported coparental cooperation and conflict as significant links between marital functioning and the parent–child relationship. Findings build on a growing body of literature addressing the transactional associations embedded within the family system and highlight the importance of modeling the inherent interdependencies between mothers’ and fathers’ reports of family functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved

Biological sensitivity to parental discipline: the role of vagal tone in the development of children’s self-regulation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Department of Teaching & Curriculum, 2015.Research linking parenting and children’s self-regulation is plentiful. However, this research is often limited on multiple fronts. Expressly, it is not always clear: 1) which parenting behaviors specifically should theoretically be related to children’s self-regulation, 2) whether or not parenting behaviors impact all children equally, and 3) how parenting is related to the multiple self-regulation constructs specified in the literature, as well as how these self-regulation constructs are related to one another. To increase precision in these areas, the present investigation tested a longitudinal process model examining: 1) if inductive and power-assertive discipline (i.e. parental control techniques) were positively (inductive) and negatively (power-assertive) associated with children’s effortful self-regulation (effortful control), as suggested by a Domains of Parenting approach, 2) if individual differences in children’s vagal tone may moderate (i.e., increase or decrease their susceptibility to) the impact of parenting on self-regulation, as suggested by Diathesis-Stress and Biological Sensitivity to Context models, and 3) examining children’s regulation of negative emotions (anger and sadness) as possible products of effortful control. Consistent with these hypotheses, Time 2 effortful control was positively associated with Time 1 inductive discipline, but negatively associated with Time 1 power-assertive discipline. Moreover, higher Time 2 effortful control was associated with greater anger, but not sadness, regulation at Time 3, and Time 1 power-assertive discipline exerted a significant indirect effect on Time 3 anger regulation via Time 2 effortful control. However, inconsistent with Diathesis Stress and Biological Sensitivity to Context models, children’s vagal tone at Time 1 did not moderate the influence of parental discipline on children’s effortful control. These results are interpreted within developmental theory as well as theories of approach/avoidance motivation, functionalist theory of emotion, domain-specific theories of parenting, and Biological Sensitivity to Context

Domain Specificity of Differential Susceptibility: Testing an Evolutionary Theory of Temperament in Early Childhood

According to differential susceptibility theory (DST), some children may be more sensitive to both positive and negative features of the environment. However, research has generated a list of widely disparate temperamental traits that may reflect differential susceptibility to the environment. In addition, findings have implicated these temperament × environment interactions in predicting a wide variety of child outcomes. This study uses a novel evolutionary model of temperament to examine whether differential susceptibility operates in a domain-general or domain-specific manner. Using a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of 243 preschoolers and their parents (56% female; 48% African American), we examined the interactions between maternal and paternal parenting quality and two evolutionary informed temperament profiles (i.e., Hawks and Doves) in predicting changes in teacher-reported conduct problems and depressive symptoms from preschool to first grade. Results suggest that differential susceptibility operates in a domain-specific fashion. Specifically, the Hawk temperament was differentially susceptible to maternal parenting in predicting externalizing problems. In contrast, the Dove temperament was susceptible to both paternal and maternal parenting quality in predicting changes in depressive symptoms. Findings provide support for an integrative framework that synthesizes DST with an evolutionary, function-based approach to temperament

Mothers’ and fathers’ self-regulation capacity, dysfunctional attributions and hostile parenting during early adolescence: A process-oriented approach

The parent-child relationship undergoes substantial reorganization over the transition to adolescence. Navigating this change is a challenge for parents because teens desire more behavioral autonomy as well as input in decision-making processes. Although it has been demonstrated that changes in parental socialization approaches facilitates adolescent adjustment, very little work has been devoted to understanding the underlying mechanisms supporting parents’ abilities to adjust caregiving during this period. Guided by self-regulation models of parenting, the present study examined how parental physiological and cognitive regulatory capacities were associated with hostile and insensitive parent conflict behavior over time. From a process-oriented perspective, we tested the explanatory role of parents’ dysfunctional childoriented attributions in this association. A sample of 193 fathers, mothers, and their early adolescent (ages 12–14) participated in laboratory- based research assessments spaced approximately 1 year apart. Parental physiological regulation was measured using square root of the mean of successive differences during a conflict task; cognitive regulation was indicated by set-shifting capacity. Results showed that parental difficulties in vagal regulation during parent-adolescent conflict were associated with increased hostile conflict behavior over time; however, greater set-shifting capacity moderated this association for fathers only. In turn, father’s dysfunctional attributions regarding adolescent behavior mediated the moderating effect. The results highlight how models of self-regulation and social cognition may explain the determinants of hostile parenting with differential implications for fathers during adolescence