Parent Emotion Socialization Practices and Child Self-regulation as Predictors of Child Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Cardiac Variability

• Published in: Child psychiatry and human development Vol. 46; no. 4; pp. 512 - 522
• Main Authors: Williams, Sarah R., Woodruff-Borden, Janet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.08.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Anxiety Disorders - diagnosis; Anxiety Disorders - psychology; Arousal; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Behavioral Sciences; Child; Child & adolescent psychiatry; Child and School Psychology; Child Rearing; Child, Preschool; Coping; Emotional Development; Emotional Intelligence; Emotions; Environmental Influences; Executive Function; Female; Heart; Humans; Male; Mothers; Original Article; Parent Role; Parent-Child Relations; Parenting - psychology; Parents & parenting; Psychiatry; Psychological Patterns; Psychology; Psychopathology; Self-Control; Socialization; Surveys and Questionnaires; Cardiac reactivity; Child anxiety; Emotion regulation; Emotion socialization
• ISSN: 0009-398X; 1573-3327
• DOI: 10.1007/s10578-014-0492-0

The importance of the parent–child relationship in emotional development is well supported. The parental role of facilitating a child’s self-regulation may provide a more focused approach for examining the role of parenting in child anxiety. The current study hypothesized that parent emotion socialization practices would predict a child’s abilities in self-regulation. Given that physiological arousal has been implicated in emotional development, this was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between parental emotion socialization and child emotion regulation to predict child anxiety. Eighty-five parent and child dyads participated in the study. Parents reporting higher degrees of unsupportive emotion socialization were more likely to have children with fewer abilities in emotion regulation. Cardiac responsiveness mediated the relationship between unsupportive emotion socialization and child emotion regulation. The model of cardiac responsiveness mediating the relationship between unsupportive emotion socialization and child emotion regulation failed to reach statistical significance in predicting child anxiety symptoms.