Broad and Narrow Cultural Comparisons of Children\u27s Emotion Regulation: Studies of Ghana and the United States

This research examined the effects of narrow (i.e., between Ghanaian orphans and village children; Study 1) and broad (i.e., between Ghana and African-American and Caucasian US children; Study 2) cultural contexts on children\u27s management of anger and sadness. Participants were 54 Ghanaian children, ages 5 to 15 (36 villagers, 18 orphans) and 77 American children, ages 5 to 15, (38 African American, 39 Caucasian American). Children completed the Children\u27s Anger and Sadness Management Scales (Zeman, Shipman, & Penza-Clyve, 2001) to assess inhibition, coping, and dysregulation strategies. Results of Study 1 indicated that orphans reported more dysregulation whereas village children reported more inhibition of negative emotions. Study 2 found significant cultural differences with Ghanaians reporting more control over their anger than Americans. In both studies, child gender and age effects were found that appear to cut across cultural divides

Mindfulness and Religiosity/Spirituality as Protecting Factors for Internalizing Symptoms Associated with Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Moderated Moderation Model

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic events during a person’s early life that can influence their later mental health, physical health, and wellbeing. Internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression are common mental health outcomes associated with these events. Two factors, religiosity/spirituality (R/S) and mindfulness, are possible protecting factors to help lessen the effect of traumatic experiences on later mental health. This study examined whether R/S and mindfulness are protective factors in the relationship between ACEs and future internalizing symptoms. Further, this study examined whether the impact of R/S was influenced by an individual’s mindfulness (moderated moderation). Participants (N = 769, age M = 20.43, SD = 4.507) for this study were recruited through the SONA research platform at East Tennessee State University as a part of the REACH (Religion, Emotions, and Current Health) self-report survey. Results from the current study did not support either mindfulness or R/S as moderating factors for the relationship between ACEs and internalizing symptoms. However, exploratory mediation suggested mindfulness was a mediator for this relationship. This study, while it did not demonstrate the buffering capacity of study variables, provides information about the implications of ACEs in a Northeast Tennessee sample. Future research should examine new variables as potential protective factors for this relationship and more detailed information about the mediating effect of mindfulness

Simulation Study to Predict How Resilience-Building Programs Will Impact Parenting Stress in Mothers with Adverse Childhood Experiences

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events that occur during childhood that impact health and wellbeing, thus having long-lasting effects. In the context of parenting, a history of ACEs can impact a caregiver’s ability to manage stress and interfere with their ability to provide sensitive and regulated caregiving. Thankfully, there are many ways that one can foster resilience in the face of past ACEs. This study aims to help mothers combat ACEs and parenting stress by experimentally investigating the benefits of two resilience-building programs. The first is an emotion-based program that focuses on emotion regulation, self-care, and attachment theory. The second is a behavior-based program that focuses on developmental milestones and general behaviorally based parenting practices (e.g. positive reinforcement, punishment). The present project uses a pre/post/follow-up design to assess parenting stress before and after engagement in the resilience-building programs. Mothers of 3-year-old children will complete the ACEs Questionnaire, which assesses how many and what specific ACEs participants have (pre-assessment), and the Parental Stress Scale (PSS), which assesses their parenting stress (pre, post, follow up). Although statistical analyses will be conducted to examine differences in PSS scores, the ACEs Questionnaire will only be used to ensure that the sample examined is mothers with ACEs, as participants who report no ACEs will be excluded from data analysis. In addition to self-report questionnaires, participants visit the Affect, Regulation, Coping, and Health (ARCH) lab to complete moderately stressful tasks while physiological data is obtained; data from lab visits will not be analyzed in this project but will be collected since this research is a part of a larger study called the 2Gen: Feeling Better Project (2Gen) that aims to examine emotion coregulation and physiological synchrony between mothers and their three-year-old children. After the pre-assessment, participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two 8-week programs (Emotion Curriculum, Behavior Curriculum) which will be provided through electronic links to brief videos. Participants also receive binders with the video scripts, handouts, resources, and reflection questions for each week’s content. Due to being at early stages in data collection, the present project will summarize the 2Gen protocol and will simulate data using mean parenting stress values from comparable studies. That simulated data will then be analyzed using JASP, an open-source statistics software. A 2x2 factorial ANOVA will be run to compare pre and post PSS scores for the emotion and behavior-based resilience-building programs. We hypothesize that parenting stress scores will decrease for all participants; however, we anticipate this change to be greater for those who receive the emotion-based program

Internalizing Symptoms Associated with Emotional Abuse: An Examination of Religious Social Support as a Moderating Variable

Emotional abuse in childhood is linked to an increased risk for internalizing symptoms such as depression and anxiety in adulthood. Religious social support offers a promising defense in maintaining mental well-being in the face of trauma. This study aims to investigate if religious social support in childhood will moderate the impact of negative outcomes associated with emotional abuse. Further, this study will examine whether and how gender and ethnicity impact this relationship. The sample includes undergraduate students attending East Tennessee State University, located in the southeastern United States (n = 471, 73% female, 11% African American, M age = 20.37, SD = 4.84). Participants completed an online survey that asked about childhood experiences (e.g., emotional abuse, emotion socialization, religious social support) as well as current mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression). Data was analyzed using Statistical Software for the Social Sciences. Bivariate relations were examined through Pearson’s correlations and moderated moderation was tested via the Hayes Process Macro (version 3.0, Model 3). Results indicated that religious social support from childhood was negatively related to depression and anxiety whereas negative religious experiences from childhood were positively related to depression and anxiety. Harsh emotion parenting from childhood was positively related to depression and anxiety in adulthood. Results did not find support for moderated moderation for predicting depression or anxiety. Chi-squared indicated no significant differences in the percentage of individuals who endorsed childhood emotional abuse due to ethnicity, gender, or the interaction of gender and ethnicity. Future research would benefit from longitudinal designs that follow children across time to better understand whether and how religious social support may be a buffer for emotional abuse experienced in childhood

The Effects of Perceived Religious Support in Childhood on Internalizing Symptoms in Early Adulthood

Research suggests those with high religiosity have better social support and lower stress levels (Gao, 2015), and more frequent attendance of religious services is related to larger social networks and higher variety and perceived quality of social support (Ellison & George, 1994). Furthermore, research has shown that the quality of religious social support protects against symptoms of anxiety and depression (Desrosiers, 2012; Lewis, 2019). However, the relationship between perceived religious support in childhood and internalizing symptoms in adulthood have not been thoroughly investigated in the literature. Therefore, we hypothesize that perceived religious support in childhood correlates with lower levels of anxiety, stress, and depression in adulthood. Data was collected at a public university in rural Appalachia (N = 769, 70.9% female, M age = 20.43, SD = 4.51) using online, self-report survey. Pearson correlations indicated a significant inverse relationship between perceived religious support in childhood and depression (r(612) = -0.30, p = 0.01), anxiety (r(629) = -0.20, p = 0.01), and stress (r(630) = -0.26, p = 0.01). These findings suggest that perceived religious support during childhood may have a small protective effect against depression, anxiety, and stress in early adulthood and that religious support in childhood may be more of a buffer for depression in adulthood compared to stress and anxiety

An Exploratory Analysis of Stress, Burnout, and Depression in the IECMH Workforce

A growing trend in the psychological literature has consistently found a strong association between stress, burnout, and depression, especially in populations who are exposed to a high amount of occupational stress. And, while the relationship between stress and burnout has been distinct and strong, the same cannot be said for burnout and depression. Historically, burnout and depression have shared such a strong conceptual relationship that the literature disagreed as to whether they were truly separate mechanisms. However, while the two constructs do present behavioral similarities the underlying mechanisms which direct their presentation are subtly different. Depression is defined as a diagnosable mood disorder, which is implicated from a number of biopsychosocial factors regardless of occupation characteristics, while burnout is defined as an occupational syndrome which presents in response to prolonged exposure stress within one’s vocation specifically. Understanding the relationship between stress, burnout, and depression is relevant for all professionals, but may be especially important to study in sectors interacting with vulnerable populations known to be at risk for burnout. The Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) workforce includes professionals who engage and serve children and families, many of whom have experienced trauma and/or have high psychosocial risk. This workforce may be particularly vulnerable to burnout in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, mental health symptoms (including depression) and stress rates have increased for many since the start of the pandemic. The current study aimed to explore perceived stress, burnout, and depression in a population of IECMH professionals, and to test whether depression symptoms act as a risk factor in the context of stress and burnout. The sample consists of 141 clinicians who work in the IECMH field (e.g., child welfare, home visiting, childcare), and who completed self-report measures of current stress, current burnout, and current depression in the summer of 2020. Bivariate correlation indicated significant and large relationships between both perceived stress and burnout (r = .70, p \u3c .001), and depression and burnout (r = .59, p \u3c .001). Given the high collinearity between our predictor (stress) and proposed moderator (depression, r = .80, p \u3c .001), testing for the moderating effect of depression on the link between stress and burnout was unjustified. These results led us to wonder if other factors might better serve as protective factors in the context of stress and burnout and thus we examined the moderating effect of self-compassion on buffering against the relationship between stress and burnout. To explore the possibility of self-compassion weakening this relationship between perceived stress and burnout, simple moderation analyses were conducted in SPSS using Hayes’ PROCESS 4.0 Macro. The overall model results were significant (F(3, 99) = 65.08, R2 = .66, p \u3c .001) and the interaction term was also significant (R2 change = .04, p = .001). Specifically, the relationship between stress (x) and burnout (y) remained significant across all levels of self-compassion, but the strength of the relationship between x and y was strongest when self-compassion was low and weakest when self-compassion was high

Exploring Intergenerational Trauma: The Impact of Caregiver Mental Health and Social Support on Adverse Childhood Experiences

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events occurring before age 18 that have been identified as leading indicators of a myriad of negative health outcomes in adulthood. Specifically, ACEs have been linked to increased adult anxiety, depression, and difficulties in emotion regulation and to decreased perceived social support. These outcomes seem to be cyclic in nature and transmit intergenerationally. For instance, individuals exposed to early adversity have an increased risk for future health difficulties, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of adversity for the individuals’ children. Thus, the present study aimed to explore paths through which adversity may be transmitted intergenerationally, specifically through caregiver mental health (e.g., anxiety and depression), emotion regulation, and perceived social support. We expected these four pathways to mediate the relationship between caregiver and child ACEs. Data were collected on child and caregiver ACEs, as well as caregiver anxiety, depression, emotion regulation, and social support, using anonymous survey methodology among 326 caregivers with children between the ages of 3 months to 15 years old. REDCap survey links were published across various social media outlets and relevant listservs. Respondents primarily identified as white, female, well-educated, and middle-class. The children’s sex distribution was approximately equal. ACEs were assessed using an expanded ACEs survey adapted from the Health-Resiliency-Stress Questionnaire, with caregivers completing the survey for both themselves and their children. Caregiver anxiety was measured using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), depression using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), emotion regulation using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-18), and social support using the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). As hypothesized, caregiver childhood adversity (i.e., their ACE scores) was positively correlated with their own reported anxiety [r(326) = .24, p \u3c .001], depression [r(326) = .23, p \u3c .001], and emotion regulation difficulties [r(326) = .20, p \u3c .001], as well as with their children’s ACE scores [r(325) = .16, p \u3c .01]. Additionally, caregiver ACEs were negatively correlated with their experienced social support, r(326) = .-.18, p \u3c .001. Simple mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of caregiver ACEs on child ACEs through caregiver anxiety [B = .03, 95% BCa CI (.006, .059)], and depression [B = .02, 95% BCa CI (.004, .045)]. No significant indirect effects were found for difficulties in emotion regulation or perceived social support. In sum, caregiver mental health appears to be a strong pathway for and predictor of intergenerational trauma, indicating that efforts to mitigate caregiver mental health may promote successful developmental outcomes for generations to follow. However, future research should also give further consideration to the potential roles of emotion regulation and social support. These potential mediators have also been found to mediate the relationship between individual ACEs and their mental health

Associations Between Temperamental Negative Affectivity and Parental Anxiety Across Childhood

Extant research suggests a link between child temperamental negativity and parental anxiety and depression. However, most studies focus on temperamental negativity generally, and over fairly short longitudinal time spans. The present study extended the time span well beyond immediate postnatal infancy and explored associations between specific child temperament dimensions, both positive and negative, and parental psychopathology. We expected positive relationships between temperamental negative affectivity and parental mental health problems, but an inverse relation involving temperamental effortful control. Data were collected on child temperament, and parental anxiety and depression, using a cross-sectional design and anonymous survey methodology across five child age groups: infancy (INF; 3 - 13 months, N ≅ 83), toddler (TOD; 14 - 36 months, N ≅ 94), early childhood (EC; 3 - 7 years, N ≅ 81), middle/late childhood (MLC; 8 - 10 years, N ≅ 31), and early adolescence (EA; 10 - 15 years, N ≅ 38). REDCap survey links were published on several dozen social media outlets and relevant listservs. Across all datasets, parental respondents primarily identified as white and female. Child gender distribution was approximately equal between girls and boys. We used the Rothbart family of instruments to assess temperamental negative affectivity and effortful control in each sample (i.e., IBQ-R Short Form, ECBQ Short Form, CBQ Short Form, TMCQ Standard Form, and EATQ-R Short Form, respectively). Parental anxiety was measured by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7), and parental depression was measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Associations involving child negative affectivity were generally consistent with expectations. Results indicated positive correlations between parental anxiety and child negative affectivity in 4 out of 5 groups (INF: r(83) = .25, p = .02; TOD: r(94) = .27, p = .01; EC: r(81) = .37, p \u3c .001; EA: r(39) = .57, p \u3c .001), and between parental depression and child negative affectivity in all age groups (INF: r(81) = .26, p = .02; TOD: r(91) = .22, p = .03; EAC: r(80) = .26, p = .02; MLC: r(30) = .42, p = .02; EAA: r(37) = .42, p = .01). Effortful control was negatively, but less robustly, correlated with parental anxiety (TOD: r(94) = -.22, p = .03; EAA: r(39) = -.44, p = .02) and depression (TOD: r(91) = -.29, p = .01; MLC: r(30) = .45, p = .01). Although we make no assumptions regarding directions of effect between child temperament and parental mental health, bidirectional influences seem likely. For example, parental mental health problems probably exacerbate temperamental negative affectivity, and temperamental negative affectivity probably exacerbates parental mental health problems. This study provides an important expansion of the timeframes of associations between parental mental health and child temperament

Exploring Emotion Regulation as a Predictor of Perceived Social Support Among Caregivers of Children

Emotion regulation is defined as adjusting emotional responses to emotion-related stimuli in socially appropriate ways. Effective emotion regulation decreases the potential for social conflict and encourages helping behaviors that promote high-quality, supportive dyadic communications. Emotion regulation may impact the perception of available social support. Social support, or feeling cared by loved ones, also promotes mental health and an increased quality of life. Less clear is the extent to which skills in emotion regulation may contribute to perceptions of emotional support. Therefore, the primary goal of the present study was to explore whether emotion regulatory skills would be correlated with perceptions of social support in a sample of caregivers. Using anonymous survey methodology, data were collected on caregiver perceived social support and emotion regulation difficulties. REDCap survey links were distributed across various social media outlets and relevant listservs. The 327 caregivers who fully completed both surveys identified primarily as white and biological mothers. We measured perceived social support with the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and emotion regulation with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. As hypothesized, perceived social support and difficulties in emotion regulation were negatively correlated r(326) = -.40, p \u3c .001. Although we make no assumptions regarding directions of effect between emotion regulatory skills and perceived social support, bidirectional influences seem likely. Given that effective emotion regulation helps to lower the intensity and duration of negative emotions, it might also affect one’s subjective perception and attainment of available support. Specifically, individuals with enhanced emotion regulatory skills may be less likely to engage in behaviors that avoid or strain relationships and may be more likely to seek support when needed. Seeking social support may ultimately create a positive feedback loop in which increased perceived social support can further improve one’s confidence and ability in regulating their emotions. Thus, this study provided useful expansion in the research of the relationships between emotion regulation and perceived social support. To further this research, however, future research could implore whether emotional regulatory skills differ among sources of social support, such as between family, friends, and significant others

Potential Neural Mediators of Mom Power Parenting Intervention Effects on Maternal Intersubjectivity and Stress Resilience

Stress resilience in parenting depends on the parent\u27s capacity to understand subjective experiences in self and child, namely intersubjectivity, which is intimately related to mimicking other\u27s affective expressions (i. e., mirroring). Stress can worsen parenting by potentiating problems that can impair intersubjectivity, e.g., problems of “over-mentalizing” (misattribution of the child\u27s behaviors) and “under-coupling” (inadequate child-oriented mirroring). Previously we have developed Mom Power (MP) parenting intervention to promote maternal intersubjectivity and reduce parenting stress. This study aimed to elucidate neural mechanisms underlying the effects of MP with a novel Child Face Mirroring Task (CFMT) in functional magnetic-resonance-imaging settings. In CFMT, the participants responded to own and other\u27s child\u27s facial pictures in three task conditions: (1) empathic mirroring (Join), (2) non-mirroring observing (Observe), and (3) voluntary responding (React). In each condition, each child\u27s neutral, ambiguous, distressed, and joyful expressions were repeatedly displayed. We examined the CFMT-related neural responses in a sample of healthy mothers (n = 45) in Study 1, and MP effects on CFMT with a pre-intervention (T1) and post-intervention (T2) design in two groups, MP (n = 19) and Control (n = 17), in Study 2. We found that, from T1 to T2, MP (vs. Control) decreased parenting stress, decreased dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) during own-child-specific voluntary responding (React to Own vs. Other\u27s Child), and increased activity in the frontoparietal cortices, midbrain, nucleus accumbens, and amygdala during own-child-specific empathic mirroring (Join vs. Observe of Own vs. Other\u27s Child). We identified that MP effects on parenting stress were potentially mediated by T1-to-T2 changes in: (1) the left superior-temporal-gyrus differential responses in the contrast of Join vs. Observe of own (vs. other\u27s) child, (2) the dmPFC-PAG (periaqueductal gray) differential functional connectivity in the same contrast, and (3) the left amygdala differential responses in the contrast of Join vs. Observe of own (vs. other\u27s) child\u27s joyful vs. distressed expressions. We discussed these results in support of the notion that MP reduces parenting stress via changing neural activities related to the problems of “over-mentalizing” and “under-coupling.” Additionally, we discussed theoretical relationships between parenting stress and intersubjectivity in a novel dyadic active inference framework in a two-agent system to guide future research