Emotion elicitation as a window on children’s emotion regulation, empathy, and social adaptation

The manner in which children manage their emotional arousal in response to challenging events is crucial for social adaptation and peer relationships (Eisenberg, Spinard, & Eggum, 2010; Saarni, 1999). However, while there is a large literature examining the relation between children’s emotion regulation and their social competencies, there are several conceptual and methodological challenges facing the emotion regulation construct (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004; Thompson, 1994). The studies presented in this thesis use structured emotion elicitation paradigms (emotionally challenging video vignettes) in order to interpret the meaning of children’s behavioural responses to specific situational contexts, within the framework of emotion regulation. In addition, concurrent and longitudinal relations between young children’s emotion regulation and their social adaptation are examined at the time of children’s school entry. Finally, the close conceptual relation between emotion regulation, empathy, and emotion understanding is empirically examined, with an emphasis on the relation between these different measures of children’s emotional competence and their independent and combined impact on social adaptation. Across two separate studies, it was found that children’s behavioural responses were systematically related to their eliciting contexts. In particular, the degree to which children disengaged from emotionally challenging content, and their expressions of worry-concern and empathic sadness, were highly contextually and temporally bound, showing a close correspondence with specific events in the emotion elicitation paradigms. However, despite the close association between children’s behavioural responses and their eliciting contexts, such responses showed impressive individual stability across contexts, as well as across time. Furthermore, there was robust independence across different behavioural domains. The only exception to this pattern was between disengagement and children’s emotional expressions; whereas children expressing higher levels of worry-concern were also observed to express higher levels of disengagement, children expressing empathic sadness expressed lower levels of disengagement. This finding broadly supports the proposal of Eisenberg and Fabes (1992) that well regulated children (i.e., low levels of disengagement) are more likely to be empathic (i.e., express empathic sadness). Examination of relations between children’s behavioural responding and their social adaptation showed that disengagement and affective responding were systematically related to their social competence: children who disengaged from the challenging vignettes most, and expressed worry-concern as opposed to empathic sadness, were more likely to be rated by their teachers as less socially mature and as having higher levels of problem behaviours. Furthermore, these same behaviours also predicted lower levels of peer acceptance. Longitudinally, only children’s disengagement was systematically related to social adaptation. In fact, disengagement, which involves attentional modulation, emerged as a robust, stable and reliable predictor of children’s social competence. Finally, emotion regulation behaviours, empathy, and emotion understanding were simultaneously examined and found to be relatively distinct components of children’s emotion competence. Furthermore, each component of emotional competence made independent contributions to concurrent and, to a lesser extent, longitudinal social competence as rated by both teachers and peers. However, only children’s emotion regulation and affective expressions were related to teacher-rated problem behaviours at both time-points. Overall, the current thesis provides a framework within which to study young school-aged children’s behavioural responses to challenging events, and has demonstrated that these responses make a unique contribution to children’s social adaptation both in Kindergarten and one year later

Crying babies, empathic toddlers, responsive mothers and fathers: Exploring parent-toddler interactions in an empathy paradigm.

The ability to display caring responses to another child's distress is a key aspect of early empathy that is facilitated by parental socialization. However, existing studies typically involve lab settings and focus on toddlers' unsupported responses to adult simulations of distress, raising questions about their ecological validity. Framed within the New Fathers and Mothers Study, the current study involved 156 British toddlers (Mage = 24.35 months, SD = 0.73) who were filmed at home with either their mother or father (87 mothers and 69 fathers) in a novel paradigm involving a lifelike crying baby doll. Capitalizing on the inclusion of both fathers and mothers, a key question concerned effects of parent-toddler dyad gender composition on both global ratings of toddlers' displays of empathic concern and more specific indicators, including toddlers' attentional, emotional, and behavioral responses. Whereas parental responses did not differ by either child or parent gender and appeared to be closely attuned to child behavior, toddlers' responses showed effects of both (a) child gender, evident in higher rates of emotion labeling in girls than in boys (even when controlling for language ability), and (b) parent gender, evident in higher levels of empathic concern for girls observed with fathers than for those observed with mothers. These findings are discussed within the context of empathy development and parental socialization

Young children's affective responses to another's distress: dynamic and physiological features.

Two descriptive studies set out a new approach for exploring the dynamic features of children's affective responses (sadness and interest-worry) to another's distress. In two samples (N(study1) = 75; N(study2) = 114), Kindergarten children were shown a video-vignette depicting another child in distress and the temporal pattern of spontaneous expressions were examined across the unfolding vignette. Results showed, in both study 1 and 2, that sadness and interest-worry had distinct patterns of elicitation across the events of the vignette narrative and there was little co-occurrence of these affects within a given child. Temporal heart rate changes (study 2) were closely aligned to the events of the vignette and, furthermore, affective responses corresponded to distinctive physiological response profiles. The implications of distinct temporal patterns of elicitation for the meaning of sadness and interest-worry are discussed within the framework of emotion regulation and empathy

Couple relationship quality and the infant home language environment: Gender-specific findings.

Couple relationship quality is known to drop significantly across the transition to parenthood (Ahlborg & Strandmark, 2001; Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009), yet individual differences in the amount of parent-to-infant talk have rarely been studied in relation to variation in couple relationship quality. Addressing this gap, the current study of 93 first-time parents with 4-month-old infants included multimeasure reports of couple relationship quality from both mothers and fathers and examined associations between couple relationship quality and the home language environment, assessed via the Language Environment Analysis (LENA), when infants were approximately 7 months old. LENA consists of a wearable talk pedometer that records a full day of naturalistic parent-infant talk and is coupled to software that provides automated analysis. Given the covariation between depression and both couple relationship quality and parental infant-directed talk, both maternal and paternal depression were controlled for in all analyses. Results showed that, for mothers of sons, frequency of infant-directed talk was inversely related to couple relationship quality. Consistent with family systems theory, this finding provides partial support for the compensation hypothesis. However, variation in couple relationship quality was unrelated to infant-directed speech in fathers or in mothers of daughters. Together, these findings demonstrate that the gender composition of the parent-infant dyads plays a moderating role on the association between couple relationship quality and parent-infant talk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Feedback from Outcome Measures and Treatment Effectiveness, Treatment Efficiency, and Collaborative Practice: A Systematic Review.

Due to recent increases in the use of feedback from outcome measures in mental health settings, we systematically reviewed evidence regarding the impact of feedback from outcome measures on treatment effectiveness, treatment efficiency, and collaborative practice. In over half of 32 studies reviewed, the feedback condition had significantly higher levels of treatment effectiveness on at least one treatment outcome variable. Feedback was particularly effective for not-on-track patients or when it was provided to both clinicians and patients. The findings for treatment efficiency and collaborative practice were less consistent. Given the heterogeneity of studies, more research is needed to determine when and for whom feedback is most effective

Sports Bettors’ Responses to Sports-Embedded Gambling Promotions: Comparisons Amongst PGSI Groups

Televised sporting events now contain a plethora of gambling and sports betting promotions, including logos, signage, advertising, sponsored segments and celebrity endorsement. This presentation focuses on how sports bettors respond to these promotions, drawing on research findings from Australia. A first study examined sports bettors’ responses to these promotions, and whether this varied with problem gambling severity. Surveys with 544 Queensland sports bettors indicated that problem gamblers had highest approval of, felt most encouragement to gamble, and had been influenced to gamble most from these promotions, compared to non-problem and at-risk gamblers. Problem gamblers were also more influenced to bet on sports by contextual factors, particularly certain bet types and promotional appeals. A second study used a conjoint design to measure responses to 20 simulated promotions amongst 611 regular sports bettors, non-regular sports bettors and non-sports bettors. Type of bet had more utility than type of commentator, type of message appeal and type of promotion. For type of bet, novelty risk-free bets were more enticing than micro-bets, exotic bets and traditional bets. After the risk-free bet, problem gamblers were distinguished from other PGSI groups by greater attraction to micro-bets. The research contributes to understanding how responses to sports-embedded gambling promotions vary with problem gambling severity. It can inform policy developments and future research on sports betting advertising, behaviour and associated gambling problems. Financial support for this study was provided by the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General

Understanding changes to children's connection to nature during the COVID‐19 pandemic and implications for child well‐being

Abstract: While psychological connection to nature is known to be associated with both pro‐environmental behaviours and well‐being, there is an urgent need to extend this research to consider impacts from the COVID‐19 lockdown period. Examining whether children's connection to nature changed during this period, identifying the drivers of these changes and determining the links between connection to nature and child well‐being can each serve to guide post‐lockdown initiatives to promote children's connection to nature. Three findings emerged from this UK sample of 376 families with young children. First, nearly two thirds of parents reported a change (most typically, an increase) in their child's connection to nature. Explanations for this increase included having more time, increased enjoyment of nature and increased awareness or interest in nature. Second, a third of children whose connection to nature decreased during the pandemic displayed increased problems of well‐being—manifest as either ‘acting out’ (externalising problems) or sadness/anxiety (internalising problems). Third, an increase in connection to nature during the pandemic was more evident for children from affluent families than for their less affluent peers. While connecting to nature may be an effective means of addressing child problems of well‐being, the divergent findings for children from different family backgrounds indicate that efforts to enhance connection to nature should focus on the barriers experienced by children from less affluent families. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article

Bullying victimisation in adolescence: prevalence and inequalities by gender, socioeconomic status and academic performance across 71 countries

Background Bullying victimisation is of global importance due to its long-term negative consequences. We examined the prevalence of victimisation and its inequalities in 15-year-olds across 71 countries. Methods Data were from the Programme for International Student Assessment (March-August 2018). Students reported frequencies of relational, physical, and verbal victimisation during the last 12 months, which were analysed separately and combined into a total score. Prevalence of frequent victimisation (> a few times a month) was estimated, followed by mean differences in total score by gender, wealth and academic performance quintiles in each country. Meta-analyses were used to examine country differences. Findings Of 421,437 students included, 113,602 (30·4%) experienced frequent victimisation, yet this varied by country—from 9·3% (Korea) to 64·8% (Philippines). Verbal and relational victimisation were more frequent (21·4%, 20.9%, respectively) than physical victimisation (15·2%). On average, boys (vs girls +0·23SD, 95%CI: 0·22–0·24), students from the lowest wealth (vs highest +0·09SD, 0·08–0·10) and with lowest academic performance (vs highest +0·49SD, 0·48–0·50) had higher scores. However, there was substantial between-country heterogeneity in these associations (I2=85%–98%). Similar results were observed for subtypes of victimisation—except relational victimisation, where gender inequalities were smaller. Interpretation Globally, bullying victimisation was high, although the size, predominant subtype and strength of associations with risk factors varied by country. The large cross-country differences observed require further replication and empirical explanation, and suggest the need to and the large scope for reducing bullying victimisation and its inequity in the future. Funding Japan Foundation for Pediatric Researc