About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 14. Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

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Emotion dysregulation is a transdiagnostic factor that underlies a myriad of psychiatric disorders (Aldao et al., 2016; Brenning et al., 2021). Furthermore, parental sensitivity has been demonstrated as a protective factor with greater parental sensitivity associated with better child emotion regulation (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Morris et al., 2017). Little is known how early interventions can influence emotion regulation up to 8 years following intervention implementation.

Participants included 89 parent-child dyads. When children were in infancy, parents were referred from Child Protective Services (CPS) and randomized to either an attachment-based intervention, the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC, N=39) intervention, or an active control intervention, Developmental Education for Families (DEF, N=50). During infancy, parent-child dyads participated in a 10-minute play assessment that was subsequently coded for parental sensitivity. When children were 10 years old (Mage = 10.59; 50.56% Male), they came back to the lab and parents reported on children’s emotion regulation and emotional lability using the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997).

Mediational analyses were conducted using PROCESS macro (Hayes et al., 2013) to assess parental sensitivity as a potential mediator of the association between intervention and child emotion regulation. There was a significant indirect effect of ABC intervention on child emotion regulation [.01, .19] and on child emotional lability [-.20, -.02] via early childhood parental sensitivity. Because the 95% confidence intervals do not contain 0, there is support that ABC intervention predicts greater emotion regulation and reduced emotional lability compared to DEF intervention via parental sensitivity.

This study emphasizes the cascading effects of an early parenting intervention on emotion regulation in middle childhood. This finding underlies the importance of intervening early to promote better outcomes for several years following the administration of the intervention. More research will need to be done to understand how better emotion regulation may possibly lead to resiliency for psychological outcomes in a serial mediation model.

Author information

Author	Role
Kristen Cotton, University of Delaware	Presenting author
Paige DeVivo, University of Delaware	Non-presenting author
Sydney Ballenger, University of Delaware	Non-presenting author
Mary Dozier, University of Delaware	Non-presenting author

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