Maternal Depression and Child Internalizing: The Moderating Role of Child Emotion Regulation

ABSTRACT

This study tests a model of children's emotion regulation (ER) as a moderator of the link between maternal depression and child internalizing problems. Participants were 78 children (ages 4 to 7), including 45 children of mothers with a history of childhood-onset depression (COD) and 33 children of mothers who had never been depressed. ER was assessed observationally during a laboratory mood induction. ER behaviors were empirically reduced into 3 categories: (a) negative focus on delay, (b) positive reward anticipation, and (c) 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 ER strategy for children at risk for depression.

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 three- to fourfold 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). ER 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 comfort from a caregiver, refocusing attention away from the source of distress, or taking direct action to re- solve a problem (Calkins, Gill, Johnson, & Smith, 1999; Grolnick, Bridges,&Connell, 1996). ER 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 ER 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 ER strategies that maintain or even increase levels of negative affect.

A second set of ER strategies described by Grolnick et al. (1996) includes comfort behaviors such as selfsoothing or seeking physical comfort from a caregiver. Infants' levels of proximity seeking to parents is viewed as one of the most critical factors in determining attachment security during distress paradigms such as the Strange Situation (Gaensbauer, 1985). Grolnick et al. also suggested that verbal behaviors may be used as a form of comfort seeking. Verbalizations such as "I can do it" or "I'm a big kid now" might serve as a primitive form of cognitive restructuring. Little is known, however, about how comfort-seeking strategies used by young children are associated with adjustment.

A third set of behaviors used by young children involves maintaining or increasing attentional focus on a distressing stimulus. A growing body of literature suggests that this is a maladaptive approach to regulating negative emotion. Research with infants and toddlers has shown that sustained focus on a frustrating stimulus, such as searching for the mother during a separation or staring at a delayed prize, is associated with anger and distress (Gaensbauer, Connell, & Schulz, 1983; Gilliom et al., 2002; Grolnick et al., 1996). Mischel and Ebbesen's (1970) classic work on delay of gratification revealed that enhanced attentional focus on a delayed reward was associated with decreased ability to wait for the reward. Sustained focus on delay or distress also appears to be a risk factor for externalizing problems (Calkins et al., 1999; Gilliom et al., 2002). Although little research has addressed links between sustained focus on distress and internalizing problems in young children, research has been conducted with older children on the relevant constructs of rumination (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994) and involuntary control coping (Compas, Connor-Smith, Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001). Findings from these studies show that, for older children and adolescents, sustained focus on the source of distress is associated with increased sad mood and internalizing problems (Compas et al., 2001; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994; Silk, Steinberg, & Morris, 2003).

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(Taken from: Silk, J.S., Shaw, D.S., Forbes, E.E., Lane, T.L., Kovacs, M. (2006). Maternal Depression and Child Internalizing: The Moderating Role of Child Emotion Regulation. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 35(1), pp. 116-126