Topic of research

Emotion regulation is widely acknowledged as a facet critical to many aspects of one’s well-being throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Brewer et al., 2016; Daniel et al., 2020). Conversely, difficulties with emotion regulation have been shown to underlie many psychiatric symptoms and disorders (Bradley et al., 2011; Lin et al., 2019). Emotion dysregulation is also thought to have intergenerational implications, especially as an early indicator of risk for the development of psychopathology in children (Li et al., 2019; Keenan, 2000). More research is needed to garner a better understanding of the potential implications of maternal emotion dysregulation for children’s outcomes as well as the mechanisms that might mediate these intergenerational associations.

The first aim of my research is to test whether women’s difficulties with emotion regulation while pregnant predict their young children’s socioemotional outcomes. I hypothesize that women who report higher levels of emotion dysregulation while pregnant will have toddlers who exhibit more socioemotional difficulties (Hypothesis 1).

The second aim of my research is to test whether maternal sensitivity to their infants’ signals during mother-infant interactions helps explain (or mediates) the intergenerational associations between prenatal maternal emotion dysregulation and toddlers’ socioemotional outcomes. I hypothesize that mothers with higher prenatal emotion dysregulation will exhibit less sensitivity when their children are infants (Hypothesis 2a). I also hypothesize that mothers who are less sensitive to their infants will have toddlers with greater socioemotional difficulties (Hypothesis 2b). Lastly, I hypothesize that the intergenerational association between prenatal maternal emotion dysregulation and toddlers’ socioemotional outcomes will be substantially weaker after accounting for maternal sensitivity during infancy (Hypothesis 2c).
By understanding how maternal emotion dysregulation might shape parent-child interactions and toddlers’ socioemotional outcomes, findings from this project can contribute to existing research on the intergenerational implications of emotion dysregulation. This information also has the potential to inform education and interventions for parents.

Relevant background/literature review

Emotion regulation is conceptualized as an awareness, understanding, and acceptance of one’s emotions, as well as the ability to modulate emotional responses, control behaviors, and act in alignment with goals when experiencing negative emotions (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). In contrast, emotion dysregulation is marked by difficulties with or the absence of any of these components. Emotion dysregulation is thought to underlie many abnormal symptoms and behaviors (Gross & Munoz, 1995), including self-harm (Linehan, 1993), aggressive behavior (Bushman et al., 2001), and clinical disorders like anxiety disorder (Mennin et al., 2002) and borderline personality disorder (Linehan, 1993).

Parents’ experiences of emotion dysregulation may have intergenerational implications for the developing child. For example, maternal emotion dysregulation during pregnancy has been associated with newborn neurobehavioral outcomes (Ostlund et al., 2019). Maternal emotion regulation has also been reported to predict the development of psychopathological symptoms in young children (Leerkes et al., 2020; Li et al., 2019).

A critical gap in this field of research is identifying the precise mechanisms by which maternal emotion dysregulation may be influencing children’s early development. One likely mechanism is the mothers’ behaviors during interactions with their children infancy and later child development. This is because emotion regulation skills are requisite for parenting tasks during daily interactions (Rutherford et al., 2015). Sensitivity is generally conceptualized as the mother’s ability to “follow the child’s lead” through an awareness of the child’s needs, moods, interests, and capabilities. Research has demonstrated associations between higher emotion dysregulation and decreased sensitivity during parent-child interactions (Carreras et al., 2019; de Campora et al., 2014). It is also generally recognized that maternal sensitivity is associated with better infant outcomes (Frick et al., 2018).

However, very few studies have directly tested whether maternal sensitivity mediates the intergenerational associations between parental emotion dysregulation and child outcomes using a longitudinal research design in which each of the constructs is assessed at a different time-point. Moreover, many of these studies focus on children at preschool age or older, so there is a general lack of information about implications during infancy and early toddlerhood. Gaining an understanding of what transpires during this time period is essential in targeting early intervention to ameliorate the effects of intergenerational emotion dysregulation in later life.

The purpose of this study is to address these research gaps and to test whether maternal sensitivity to their infants’ signals during mother-infant interactions helps explain (or mediates) the intergenerational associations between prenatal maternal emotion dysregulation and toddlers’ socioemotional outcomes. Data for the project were collected from 385 mother-child dyads who enrolled in BABY Affect and Behavior (BABY) study. The BABY study is a longitudinal study that examines how emotion dysregulation is intergenerationally transmitted from mother to child. Mothers enrolled in the BABY study when they were pregnant and then completed several questionnaires and tasks with their child during follow-up visits.

For this study, three measures will be used. The first is the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004). The DERS is a self-report questionnaire used to assess one’s emotion dysregulation. I will use maternal DERS scores collected during the prenatal visit. The second measure I will use is maternal sensitivity when infants were approximately 7-months old. Observations of mother-infant interactions during a 10-minute play interaction were collected as part of a 7-month research visit. The observations were coded by a trained team using the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment, which is a well-validated system for coding parental sensitivity to their infant’s signals (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1996). The third measure I will use for the proposed study is mothers’ reports of their toddlers’ socioemotional outcomes using the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA; Carter et al., 2003). Within the BABY study, the ITSEA was collected when children were approximately 18 months old. The ITSEA is a parent-report questionnaire designed to assess child socioemotional difficulties and competencies in four domains: externalizing behavior problems (e.g., children’s activity/impulsivity, aggression/defiance, and peer aggression), children’s internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression/withdrawal, general anxiety, separation distress, and inhibition to novelty), children’s dysregulation (e.g., sleep problems, negative emotionality, eating difficulties, and sensory sensitivities), and socioemotional competence (e.g., compliance, attention, imitation/play, mastery, motivation, empathy, and prosocial peer relations). I will independently examine each of these domains in my thesis.

Specific activities to be undertaken and a timeline allotted for each activity

Clearly defining the research questions and hypotheses as well as the plan for testing the hypotheses prior to conducting a research study is regarded as a best practice in psychological science (Nosek et al., 2018). Therefore, I will preregister the current study’s aims, hypotheses, methods, and data analytics with the Center for Open Science.

Project Timeline:

Week 1-3 (August 19 – September 6)

Week 4-6 (September 9 – September 27)

Week 7-10 (September 30 – October 25)

Week 10-12 (October 28 – November 15)

Week 13-15 (November 18 – December 6)

Relationship of the proposed work to the expertise of the faculty mentor

Dr. Lee Raby is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology here at the University of Utah. Dr. Raby’s work explores perennial questions relating to the impact of early experiences with parents and caregivers on various spheres of development, including socioemotional, cognitive, and neurobiological. Dr. Raby’s work aims to garner a better understanding of how early parent-child relationship experiences can promote healthy development in children.

Dr. Raby is also the director of the Early Experience Research lab, which helps direct the Baby Affect and Behavior Study (BABY). BABY is a NIH-funded longitudinal study focused on understanding the intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation from mother to child. This study provides foundational information about how maternal emotion dysregulation impacts children’s socioemotional outcomes. Some of Dr. Raby’s published work includes research on the potential buffering effect of maternal sensitivity on child emotion dysregulation (Brown et al., 2024) and offspring risks of prenatal exposure to maternal emotion dysregulation (Ostlund et al., 2019).

Beyond his extensive expertise, Dr. Raby maintains high involvement with students working in his lab. His mentorship has had a meaningful impact on many University of Utah students in their academic endeavors, foundationally in allowing them to play a role in conducting research in developmental psychology. Dr. Raby has been a critical fixture in my own aspirations, from providing me with the opportunity to work as an undergraduate research assistant, to answering questions about my professional development, and helping me refine my honors thesis to explore a topic that pertains directly to my current interests and future goals. Dr. Raby has been incredibly responsive to my inquiries and has guided me and many other students alike.

Relationship of the Proposed Work to the Student’s Future Goals

I am an Honors Psychology major with minors in Human Development and Family Studies and Philosophy. I am also pursuing a certificate in Quantitative Research Analytics in Social Science and a certificate in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. For as long as I can remember, I have had some fascination with how differences in early life experiences affect various aspects of development. After witnessing my own parents raise my younger siblings so deliberately and working with families in many different contexts, I am left with many questions about how parenting and other environmental factors lend themselves to child development.

As I have become more familiar with the research being done in Dr. Raby’s lab and the broader developmental psychology realm, it’s been made clear to me that I want to follow a research-oriented career path, likely striving for a PhD in Developmental Psychology. Having the opportunity to complete a UROP will help facilitate these goals by enabling me to dive deeper into the developmental psychology research world, as I learn how to navigate a project of my own. In doing so, I hope to equip myself with more experience to highlight on graduate school applications, as well as honing in on where my specific interests lie.

References

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Brewer, S. K., Zahniser, E., & Conley, C. S. (2016). Longitudinal impacts of emotion regulation on emerging adults: Variable- and person-centered approaches. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 47, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2016.09.002

Brown, M. A., Gao, M., Isenhour, J., Shakiba, N., Crowell, S. E., Raby, K. L., & Conradt, E. (2024). Understanding emotion dysregulation from infancy to toddlerhood with a multilevel perspective: The buffering effect of maternal sensitivity. Development and Psychopathology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954579424000774

Bushman, B. J., Baumeister, R. F., & Phillips, C. M. (2001). Do people agree to improve their mood? Catharsis beliefs, affect regulation opportunity, and aggressive responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 17–32. Carreras, J., Carter, A. S., Heberle, A., Forbes, D., & Gray, S. a. O. (2019). Emotion Regulation and Parent Distress: Getting at the Heart of Sensitive Parenting among Parents of Preschool Children Experiencing High Sociodemographic Risk. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(11), 2953–2962. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01471-z

Carter, A. S., Briggs-Gowan, M. J., Jones, S. M., & Little, T. D. (2003). The Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA): factor structure, reliability, and validity. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 31, 495–514. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1025449031360

Daniel, S. K., Abdel-Baki, R., & Hall, G. B. (2020). The Protective Effect of emotion regulation on child and adolescent wellbeing. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(7), 2010–2027. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01731-3

De Campora, G., Giromini, L., Larciprete, G., Volsi, V. L., & Zavattini, G. C. (2014). The impact of maternal overweight and emotion regulation on early eating behaviors. Eating Behaviors, 15, 403–409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2014.04.013

Frick, M. A., Forslund, T., Fransson, M., Johansson, M., Bohlin, G., & Brocki, K. C. (2017). The role of sustained attention, maternal sensitivity, and infant temperament in the development of early self‐regulation. British Journal of Psychology, 109(2), 277–298. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12266

Gratz, K. L., & Roemer, L. (2004). Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26, 41–54. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:joba.0000007455.08539.94

Gross, J. J., & Muñoz, R. F. (1995). Emotion regulation and mental health. Clinical Psychology, 2, 151–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2850.1995.tb00036.x

Keenan, K. (2000). Emotion dysregulation as a risk factor for child psychopathology. Clinical Psychology, 7(4), 418–434. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.7.4.418

Leerkes, E. M., Su, J., & Sommers, S. A. (2020). Mothers’ self‐reported emotion dysregulation: A potentially valid method in the field of infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 41(5), 642–650. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21873

Li, D., Li, D., Wu, N., & Wang, Z. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation through parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotions: Tests of unique, actor, partner, and mediating effects. Children and Youth Services Review, 101, 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.03.038

Lin, B., Kaliush, P. R., Conradt, E., Terrell, S., Neff, D., Allen, A. K., … & Crowell, S. E. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: Part I. Psychopathology, self-injury, and parasympathetic responsivity among pregnant women. Development and Psychopathology, 31(3), 817-831.

Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive–behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York: Guilford Press.

Mennin, D. S., Heimberg, R. G., Turk, C. L., & Fresco, D. M. (2002). Applying an emotion regulation framework to integrative approaches to generalized anxiety disorder. Clinical Psychology, 9, 85–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.9.1.85

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Nosek, B. A., Ebersole, C. R., DeHaven, A. C., & Mellor, D. T. (2018). The preregistration revolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2600-2606.

Ostlund, B. D., Vlisides-Henry, R. D., Crowell, S. E., Raby, K. L., Terrell, S., Brown, M. A., Tinajero, R., Shakiba, N., Monk, C., Shakib, J. H., Buchi, K. F., & Conradt, E. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: Part II. Developmental origins of newborn neurobehavior. Development and Psychopathology, 31(3), 833–846. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954579419000440

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