Longitudinal changes in young children's strategy use for emotion regulation.

The development of strategies that support autonomous self-regulation of emotion is key for early childhood emotion regulation. Children are thought to transition from predominant reliance on more automatic or interpersonal strategies to reliance on more effortful, autonomous strategies as they develop cognitive skills that can be recruited for self-regulation. However, there are few longitudinal studies documenting age-related changes in different forms and dimensions of strategies.

Adolescent Conflict Appraisals Moderate the Link Between Marital Conflict and Physiological Stress Reactivity.

The goal of this study was to advance understanding of how adolescent conflict appraisals contribute uniquely, and in combination with interparental conflict behavior, to individual differences in adolescent physiological reactivity. Saliva samples were collected from 153 adolescents (52% female; ages 10-17 years) before and after the Trier Social Stress Test. Saliva was assayed for cortisol and alpha-amylase.

Associations Between Marital Conflict and Adolescent Conflict Appraisals, Stress Physiology, and Mental Health.

The goal of the current study was to examine conflict appraisals and diurnal cortisol production as mediators of the robust association between marital conflict and adolescent adjustment problems. Parents reported their marital conflict and were observed engaging in a marital conflict discussion; they also reported adolescent internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Adolescents (n = 105, 52% female, 10-17 years of age) appraised their parents' marital conflict and reported their internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Dyadic Flexibility in Early Parent-Child Interactions: Relations with Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Negativity and Behaviour Problems.

Lower levels of parent-child affective flexibility indicate risk for children's problem outcomes. This short-term longitudinal study examined whether maternal depressive symptoms were related to lower levels of dyadic affective flexibility and positive affective content in mother-child problem-solving interactions at age 3.5 years (=100) and whether these maternal and dyadic factors predicted child emotional negativity and behaviour problems at a 4-month follow-up.

Contingencies in Mother-Child Teaching Interactions and Behavior Regulation and Dysregulation in Early Childhood.

Predictable patterns in early parent-child interactions may help lay the foundation for how children learn to self-regulate. The present study examined contingencies between maternal teaching and directives and child compliance in mother-child problem-solving interactions at age 3.5 and whether they predicted children's behavioral regulation and dysregulation (inhibitory control and externalizing behaviors) as rated by mothers, fathers, and teachers at a 4-month follow-up ( = 100).

Flexibility and attractors in context: family emotion socialization patterns and children's emotion regulation in late childhood.

Familial emotion socialization practices relate to children's emotion regulation (ER) skills in late childhood, however, we have more to learn about how the context and structure of these interactions relates to individual differences in children's ER. The present study examined flexibility and attractors in family emotion socialization patterns in three different conversational contexts and their relation to ER in 8-12 year olds. Flexibility was defined as dispersion across the repertoire of discrete emotion words and emotion socialization functions (emotion coaching, dismissing, and elaboration) in family conversation, whereas attractors were defined as the average duration per visit to each of these three emotion socialization functions using state space grid analysis.

Dyadic flexibility and positive affect in parent-child coregulation and the development of child behavior problems.

Parent-child dyadic rigidity and negative affect contribute to children's higher levels of externalizing problems. The present longitudinal study examined whether the opposite constructs of dyadic flexibility and positive affect predicted lower levels of externalizing behavior problems across the early childhood period. Mother-child (N = 163) and father-child (n = 94) dyads engaged in a challenging block design task at home when children were 3 years old.

Individual differences in the development of early peer aggression: integrating contributions of self-regulation, theory of mind, and parenting.

This prospective longitudinal study focused on self-regulatory, social-cognitive, and parenting precursors of individual differences in children's peer-directed aggression at early school age. Participants were 199 3-year-old boys and girls who were reassessed following the transition to kindergarten (5.5-6 years).

Interactions between maternal parenting and children's early disruptive behavior: bidirectional associations across the transition from preschool to school entry.

This study was a prospective 2-year longitudinal investigation of associations between negative maternal parenting and disruptive child behavior across the preschool to school transition. Our main goals were to 1) determine the direction of association between early maternal negativity and child disruptive behaviors across this important developmental transition and 2) examine whether there would be different patterns of associations for boys and girls. Participants were 235 children (111 girls; T1; M = 37.

Collateral benefits of the Family Check-Up on early childhood school readiness: indirect effects of parents' positive behavior support.

The authors examined the longitudinal effects of the Family Check-Up (FCU) on parents' positive behavior support and children's school readiness competencies in early childhood. It was hypothesized that the FCU would promote language skills and inhibitory control in children at risk for behavior problems as an indirect outcome associated with targeted improvements in parents' positive behavior support. High-risk families in the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program participated in a multisite preventive intervention study (N = 731) with 3 yearly assessments beginning at child age 2 years.

Assessment of child problem behaviors by multiple informants: a longitudinal study from preschool to school entry.

Background: Children's early problem behavior that manifests in multiple contexts is often more serious and stable. The concurrent and predictive validity of ratings of externalizing and internalizing by four informants was examined at preschool and early school age in an at-risk sample.

Methods: Two hundred forty children were assessed by mothers and fathers (Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)), and teachers and laboratory examiners (Teacher Report Form (TRF)) at ages 3 and 5 years.