Maternal Depression and Child Internalizing: The Moderating Role of Child Emotion Regulation (original) (raw)

2006, Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology

This study tests a model of children's emotion regulation as a moderator of the link between maternal depression and child internalizing problems. Participants were 78 children (ages 4-7), including 45 children of mothers with a history of childhood-onset depression (COD) and 33 children of never-depressed mothers (NCOD). Emotion regulation was assessed observationally during a laboratory mood induction. Emotion regulation behaviors were empirically reduced into three categories: (1) negative focus on delay; (2) positive reward anticipation; and (3) behavioral distraction. Linear mixed models indicated that positive reward anticipation moderated the effects of maternal COD on children's internalizing problems, particularly if mothers had current depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that generating positive affect in the face of a potential frustration may be a protective emotion regulation strategy for children at risk for depression. Emotion Regulation and Maternal Depression 3 Maternal Depression and Child Internalizing: the Moderating Role of Child Emotion Regulation Offspring of depressed parents are known to be at increased risk for depression and other psychiatric and psychosocial problems compared to the general population (Beardslee, Bemporad, Keller, & Klerman, 1983). Children of depressed parents are at a 3-to 4-fold risk for developing depression prior to adulthood (Beardslee, Versage, & Gladstone, 1998; Weissman, Warner, Wickramaratne, Moreau, & Olfson, 1997), with up to 45% having an episode of major depression by late adolescence (Beardslee et al., 1998; Hammen, 2000). However, even within this high-risk population, many children remain free of psychopathology (Weissman et al., 1997). During the last two decades, a growing number of researchers have applied a transactional perspective to the study of vulnerability and resiliency among high-risk populations. A transactional perspective highlights the ongoing reciprocal interplay between social, biological, and psychological characteristics (Sameroff & MacKenzie, 2003). According to such a perspective, reciprocal transactions among caregiver and child characteristics act dynamically to increase or decrease the likelihood that a child will develop depression or other psychological disturbances (Cicchetti & Toth, 1998). One important child characteristic that could promote resiliency or exacerbate risk in the context of maternal depression is the ability to adaptively regulate emotions. Emotion regulation (ER) is defined as the internal and external processes involved in the initiation, maintenance, or modification of the quality, intensity, or chronometry of affective responses (Forbes & Dahl, in press). Emotion regulation is a complex construct, and factors involved in initiating versus regulating an emotion are closely intertwined (e.g. Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004; Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004). The literature suggests that a wide variety of responses can serve emotion regulatory goals in childhood, such as seeking physical Emotion Regulation and Maternal Depression 4 comfort from a caregiver, re-focusing attention away from the source of distress, or taking direct action to resolve a problem (Calkins, Gill, Johnson, & Smith, 1999; Grolnick, Bridges, & Connell, 1996). Emotion regulation may be a particularly important factor in understanding risk for internalizing problems, which are characterized by affective dysregulation involving sadness, fear, or joy. One of the most common scenarios requiring emotion regulation for children is the demand to wait for a desired object or goal, especially when there is little else of interest in the environment. Examples include having to wait for a parent to get off the phone or attend to another child, for school to end, or for a favorite snack or toy. For a young child, waiting even a few minutes without attaining a desired goal can provoke negative emotions. Children may respond under such circumstances with adaptive strategies that serve to down-regulate levels of negative affect, or with maladaptive emotion regulation strategies that maintain or even increase levels of negative affect. Beginning in infancy, children utilize rudimentary behaviors to regulate emotional experience. These behaviors become increasingly sophisticated as children develop more complex cognitive and emotional skills (Kopp, 1989). Grolnick et al. (1996) outlined a set of behaviors for regulating emotion that are commonly used by preschool aged children. The first set of strategies includes behaviors aimed at shifting attention from a distressing stimulus toward a non-distressing stimulus (Derryberry & Rothbart, 1988). Observational studies of infants and young children show that attention shifting, or re-focusing attention on a non-distressing stimulus, is generally an effective strategy that has been associated with lower levels of