The Effect of Parent Emotion-Related Talk on Infant Behavior and Emotion Regulation
Abstract
Early parent-infant interactions play a critical role in the social, emotional, and behavioral development of children. While several aspects of parent-infant interactions have been thoroughly examined, parent emotion socialization has not been examined to the same extent. The current work aimed to examine the development of parent emotion-related talk in mothers of infants with and without elevated behavior problems in two studies. The first study examined the developmental trajectory of parent emotion-related talk among mothers of infants with and without elevated behaviors. Furthermore, a secondary goal of the study was to examine the effect of parent emotion-related talk on infant behavior and regulation. The study included 101 mother-infant dyads including 43 infants with and 58 infants without elevated behavior problems. All mothers completed a measure on child behavior, videotaped behavioral observations of mother-infant interactions, and a brief emotion regulation task with their infant at three assessments. Growth analyses demonstrated different developmental changes in parent emotion-related talk in mothers of infants with and without elevated behavior problems. For mothers of infants with elevated behavior problems, the starting point of parent emotion-related talk was very low with a significant linear increase, and no significant variability. However, for mothers of infants without elevated behavior problems, there was significant variability in the starting point of parent emotion-related talk as well as the trajectory over time. Furthermore, for mothers of infants with elevated behavior problems parent emotion-related talk at the first assessment significantly predicted infant emotion regulation at the third assessment. These preliminary results highlight the differences in parent emotion-related talk in mothers of infants. The goal of the second study was to examine the effect of a brief in-home parenting intervention on parent emotion-related talk. The study included 58 mother-infant dyads, with 28 mother-infant dyads assigned to the standard care group and 30 mother-infant dyads assigned to the intervention group. Mothers in the intervention group used more parent emotion-related talk at post-intervention than mothers in the standard care group. Furthermore, maternal depressive symptoms at baseline significantly moderated the effect of the intervention on parent emotion-related talk at post-intervention and follow-up. Specifically, mothers with higher depressive symptoms at baseline who received the intervention, demonstrated higher levels of parent emotion-related talk than mothers with lower scores of depressive symptoms who received the intervention.
Subject Area
Psychology|Clinical psychology|Developmental psychology
Recommended Citation
Lorenzo, Nicole E, "The Effect of Parent Emotion-Related Talk on Infant Behavior and Emotion Regulation" (2019). ProQuest ETD Collection for FIU. AAI28315973.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/dissertations/AAI28315973