Presenter(s): Annaliese Elliot — Psychology
Faculty Mentor(s): Jennifer Ablow, Jeffrey Measelle
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
Emotion dysregulation is a demonstrated precursor to future psychopathology. Infancy is a critical time to develop self regulatory skills in the context of a relationship with primary caregivers. How well a caregiver can aid infant regulation development varies, often depending on the caregiver’s own emotion regulation abilities. This study aims to build upon previous research by examining the predictive association between reported maternal emotional dysregulation, using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and observations of infant self regulation at six months. Temperament, measured with the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire (IBQ-R), will be controlled to capture the independent contributions of maternal dysregulation to infant’s early indices of emotion regulation capacities. Infants’ self regulation and negative affect will be measured with micro- analytic behavioral coding during the Still Face Paradigm (SFP), which examines patterns between a caregiver and their infant. It is hypothesized that greater emotion dysregulation in mothers will predict negative affect and ineffective regulation in infants during the SFP, above the effect of temperament. Understanding how a pregnant woman’s dysregulation relates to her infant’s developing regulatory strategies may provide insight into specific mechanisms through which risk for emotion dysregulation is transmitted across generations.