Parental Responses to Children’s Negative Emotions: Impact on Neural and Physiological Self-Regulation

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY Effective emotion regulation (ER) is essential for successful development, as difficulties in ER are associated with significant emotional, behavioral, and mental problems. Early in life, parental responses to their child’s negative emotions play a significant role in the development of adaptive ER. However, little work has explored how in-the-moment parental responses during in-vivo emotional events influence children’s ER. Furthermore, while the functioning of biological systems is crucial in shaping the development of effective emotional processes, there is a significant gap in understanding how in-the-moment parental responses influence children’s neural and physiological regulation. Aligning with NICHD’s Strategic Objective 4 which focuses on “improving child and adolescent health and the transition to adulthood”, this K99/R00 proposal aims to explore how in-the-moment parental responses influence key neural and physiological markers of ER, especially in response to negative emotions (Aims 1, 3, and 4). Additionally, the quality of the parent-child relationship is hypothesized to play a crucial role in moderating the effects of the relationship between parental responses and children’s neural and physiological regulation. Therefore, the proposed study will also examine how parent-child relationship quality influences the association between parental responses and the child’s neural and physiological ER (Aims 2, 5). This research will employ EEG and ECG measures (i.e., alpha asymmetry, respiratory sinus arrhythmia) to assess children’s neural and physiological ER processes. Observational assessments of parental responses will also be conducted to capture dynamic parent-child interactions. The findings from this project could significantly improve our understanding of how in-the-moment parenting affects child ER by integrating neural and physiological data, offering insights that may inform future intervention strategies. The K99/R00 phase of the award will provide essential training in four key areas: 1) EEG and ECG methodologies; 2) behavioral coding of parental responses to children’s negative emotions; 3) longitudinal study design, data collection, and analysis; 4) theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the impact of parent-child relationship quality on child ER. A multidisciplinary team of mentors and consultants has been assembled to support the candidate in achieving these training objectives. Ultimately, this research will offer new insights into the dynamic relationship between parenting and children’s neural and physiological regulation during early to middle childhood, a period when ER transitions from being primarily externally regulated by parents to becoming more internally regulated by the child. The proposed research and training plan will prepare the candidate to establish an independent and distinctive research program that employs multi-modal methods to advance the field of developmental psychology, with the long-term goal of informing evidence-based strategies that promote healthy emotional development in children.