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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (7 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 12, Issue 1 (2018)
Correlates of child psychology have been studied for decades (Ollendick & Herson, 1989). Researchhas shown that parental psychopathology can influence child psychopathology through a combinationof familial and environmental factors (Biedel & Turner, 1997; Burstein et al., 2010). Parent-childinteractions have also been found to relate to child psychopathology (Donenberg & Weisz, 1997). Apossible explanation for these relations is that the behavior of parents experiencing psychopathologysymptoms differs from parents not facing these difficulties, like displaying more hostile behaviortowards their offspring (Burstein et al., 2010). The present study examines the interaction of parentpsychopathology and parent-child conflict during a stressful task to see if conflict moderated therelation between parents’ and children’s psychopathology. We studied whether the relation betweenparent and child symptoms would be stronger for dyads characterized by conflict. 184 children aged3 to 11 (91 boys and 93 girls) visited the lab. Parents completed questionnaires to measure theirdepression and anxiety symptoms, as well as the child’s anxiety and depressive symptoms. Theparent and the child also participated in a Lego task where instances of child conflict were observed.Results showed that parent anxiety interacted with parent-child conflict to predict children’s anxietysymptoms, such that parents’ anxiety predicted children’s anxiety only among dyads characterizedby high levels of conflict. The same was not true for depressive symptoms. The current study expandsresearch about moderators by showing that the link between parent and child psychopathology isqualified by other aspects of the family environment.
    Cover page: Parent Psychopathology and Parent-Child Conflict Interact to Predict Children’s Anxiety but Not DepressionCreative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2020)
    Emotion regulation (ER) substantially develops during the childhood years. This growth includes an increasing awareness that certain ER strategies are more appropriate in some contexts than others, but few studies have explored how children tailor ER strategies across contexts (i.e. context sensitivity). Understanding this could help clarify why some children have difficulties effectively regulating their emotions even when they have a broad strategy repertoire. The current study explored differences in Hispanic children's ER strategy context sensitivity across three emotions and explored attentional control as a possible moderator of this sensitivity. Children (N = 78; M = 9.91; SD = 1.14; 50% girls; household income M = 31-40k) completed an attentional control task and were interviewed about their ER strategy preferences for sadness, fear, and anger. Context sensitivity was measured as the proportion of endorsed ER strategies that theoretically "fit" the given emotion. Children showed more sensitivity for anger and fear compared to sadness. Attentional control predicted context sensitivity for sadness only, but this was qualified by age. Older children showed more context sensitivity with increasing attentional control. Findings provide insight into emotional development in late childhood by highlighting children's awareness of the context-appropriate nature of ER strategies across emotions.
      Cover page: Children’s awareness of the context-appropriate nature of emotion regulation strategies across emotions
      • Thesis
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2018)

      Anxiety symptoms are considered one of the most common psychopathological symptoms in children (Anderson, Williams, McGee, & Silva, 1987) and often predict anxiety symptoms throughout life (Bosquet & Egeland, 2006), as well as other mood disorders in adulthood (Roza, Hofstra, van der Ende, & Verhulst, 2003). Because anxiety symptoms emerge early in life and seem to remain stable throughout development, it is essential that we understand the specific processes that maintain, exacerbate, or protect against the effects of anxiety symptoms. Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S., making up about 25% of school-aged children (and up to 50% in California; US Department of Education, 2015). Hispanic children have a higher likelihood of experiencing depression, anxiety, and related mental disorders compared to other minority children (Canino, Gould, Prupis, & Shaffer, 1986). Few studies have addressed potential risk and protective factors that could help us better understand the development of symptoms in this group (Flores et al., 2002). Thus, greater emphasis is needed to understand what aspects of these children’s environments might predict their anxiety symptoms. The goal of this dissertation was to assess whether and how emotion regulation relates to anxiety symptoms in Hispanic children, to identify protective and risk factors for this understudied population.

      This dissertation study explored the link between emotion regulation, bilingualism, and anxiety symptoms in 78 Hispanic children between the ages of 8-11 (M = 9.91, SD = 1.14; 39 girls). The main questions guiding this dissertation were: 1) Are there differences in executive functions based on Hispanic children’s level of bilingualism? 2) Are there differences in emotion regulation abilities based on Hispanic children’s level of bilingualism? and 3) Which aspects of emotion regulation (Context Sensitivity, Repertoire, and Implementation) are linked to anxiety symptoms for Hispanic children? Results suggest that bilingualism was associated with inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, emotional attention and context sensitivity, but not with the other measures of executive functions and emotion regulation. Context sensitivity emerged as the only aspect of emotion regulation that predicted anxiety symptoms. Implications for our understanding of Hispanic children’s anxiety and directions for future work are discussed.

        Cover page: The Role of Bilingualism and Emotion Regulation on Hispanic Children’s Anxiety Development
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 12, Issue 1 (2018)
        Emotion regulation is the process through which a person changes his or her emotions. Individualsmay change their emotions in many ways, and these different aspects of emotion regulation mighthave different implications for one’s self-esteem. Self-esteem is defined as an individual’s conceptof the self. Despite the substantial research on these topics, there has been a lack of research onthe links between emotion regulation and self-esteem. The present study aimed to explore the linkbetween emotion regulation and self-esteem in young adults, as well as to examine potential genderdifferences in this association. Based on current research, we predicted that men would have higherself-esteem than women, whereas women would have a stronger capacity to regulate their emotions.Furthermore, we predicted women would show a stronger association between emotion regulationand self-esteem. Participants were asked to answer the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation (DERS)questionnaire as well as a singular measure to assess their self-esteem. The results of the presentstudy were consistent with our hypothesis that men would have a higher self-esteem, and that womenwould show a stronger association between emotion regulation and self-esteem. Our study adds to agrowing body of research on the importance of emotion regulation for self-esteem.
          Cover page: Building a Sense of Self: The Link between Emotion Regulation and Self-Esteem in Young AdultsCreative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2016)
          Children commonly experience negative emotions like sadness and fear, and much recent empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the factors supporting and predicting effective emotion regulation. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a cardiac index of parasympathetic function, has emerged as a key physiological correlate of children's self-regulation. But little is known about how children's use of specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies corresponds to concurrent parasympathetic regulation (i.e., RSA reactivity while watching an emotion-eliciting video). The current study describes an experimental paradigm in which 101 5- and 6-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of three different emotion regulation conditions: Control, Distraction, or Reappraisal. All children watched a sad film and a scary film (order counterbalanced), and children in the Distraction and Reappraisal conditions received instructions to deploy the target strategy to manage sadness/fear while they watched. Consistent with predictions, children assigned to use either emotion regulation strategy showed greater RSA augmentation from baseline than children in the Control condition (all children showed an overall increase in RSA levels from baseline), suggesting enhanced parasympathetic calming when children used distraction or reappraisal to regulate sadness and fear. But this pattern was found only among children who viewed the sad film before the scary film. Among children who viewed the scary film first, reappraisal promoted marginally better parasympathetic regulation of fear (no condition differences emerged for parasympathetic regulation of sadness when the sad film was viewed second). Results are discussed in terms of their implications for our understanding of children's emotion regulation and affective physiology.
            Cover page: The effects of distraction and reappraisal on children’s parasympathetic regulation of sadness and fear
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 12, Issue 1 (2018)
            Parenting behaviors greatly influence children’s ability to regulate their emotions and handle stressfulsituations. Stressful life events can be particularly problematic for children as they are less able toeffectively manage these situations. Parenting behaviors that are warm and focus on directly helpingthe child handle negative emotions may serve as protective factors against the negative effects ofstress on children’s regulatory abilities. The aim of this study was to explore the role of parentalwarmth and parents’ emotion-focused reactions as moderators of the effect of stress on children’semotion regulation. A total of 184 children between the ages of three to eleven years old (M = 7.66,SD = 2.30) participated in this study. Parents reported on their child’s emotion regulation, exposure tostressful life events, and on how they, as parents, deal with their child’s negative emotions. Parentalwarmth was coded from an interactive task. Results showed that parental warmth moderated therelation between stress and child emotion regulation, such that children of highly warm parentshad better emotion regulation even when experiencing high stress. Parents’ reactions to theirchild’s negative emotions moderated the effects of parental warmth on child emotion regulation,such that parental warmth was particularly important for children of parents who place less focuson their child’s emotions when they experience a negative event. Our findings partially supportedour hypotheses and offer new insight into the importance of parental warmth as a protective factoragainst the negative consequences of stress on children’s emotional functioning.
              Cover page: Does Parenting Moderate the Relation between Stress and Children’s Emotion Regulation?Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2017)
              Effective regulation of emotion is one of the most important skills that develops in childhood. Research interest in this area is expanding, but empirical work has been limited by predominantly correlational investigations of children's skills. Relatedly, a key conceptual challenge for emotion scientists is to distinguish between emotion responding and emotion regulatory processes. This paper presents a novel method to address these conceptual and methodological issues in child samples. An experimental paradigm that assesses the effectiveness with which children regulate emotion is described. Children are randomly assigned to use specific emotion regulation strategies, negative emotions are elicited with film clips, and changes in subsequent psychophysiology index the extent to which emotion regulation is effective. Children are instructed to simply watch the emotion-eliciting film (control), distract themselves from negative emotions (cognitive distraction), or reframe the situation in a way that downplays the importance of the emotional event (cognitive reappraisal). Cardiac physiology, continuously acquired before and during the emotional task, serves as an objective measure of children's unfolding emotional responding while viewing evocative films. Key comparisons in patterns of obtained physiological reactivity are between the control and emotion regulation strategy conditions. Representative results from this approach are described, and discussion focuses on the contribution of this methodological approach to developmental science.
                Cover page: Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood.
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