Key Findings
Attention bias to negative interactions is a risk factor for anxiety
When adolescents show an attention bias towards angry interpersonal interactions, more negative interparental conflict relates to increased adolescent anxiety symptoms. When adolescents do not show this bias for angry interactions, however, there is no relation between interparental conflict and anxiety (Lucas-Thompson, Sieter, & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Maternal scaffolding and directive dynamics vary by risk status
When children go off-task, mothers with higher cumulative risk are less likley to redirect with scaffolding as compared to lower-risk mothers. When children get back on-task, mothers with higher cumulative risk are both less likely to respond with scaffolding and more likely to respond with directives – even when directives may be unnecessary (Diercks, Lunkenheimer, & Brown, 2020).
Parent RSA reactivity and symptom risk profiles predict child dysregulation
Risk profiles of respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) reactivity and psychopathology symptoms emerged for both mothers (four profiles) and fathers (three profiles). Mild risk profiles had higher resting RSA but did not vary in reactivity. Child dysregulation one year later was predicted by mild and moderate risk profiles as compared to typical profiles (Skoranski & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Dyadic contingency and flexibility may be adaptive or maladaptive
More flexible and contingent parent-child affect when content is positive or neutral predicts greater child self-regulation. When content is more negative, however, more behavioral flexibility, as well as affective and behavioral contingency, predicts lower child self-regulation (Lobo & Lunkenheimer, 2020).
Parental emotion socialization is a dynamic, dyadic process
Emotion-related socializations behaviors relate to dyadic positive synchrony with both mothers and fathers and their three-year-olds. Further, both mothers’ and fathers’ emotion-related socialization behaviors contribute to later lower child aggressive behavior via higher dyadic positive synchrony. (Lunkenheimer, Hamby, Lobo, Cole, & Olson, 2020).
Parasympathetic substrates of dyadic repair differ by maltreatment status
Higher maternal repair of negative interactions is protective for child stress physiology. However, when fewer repairs occur, non-maltreated children show an expected physiological arousal indicating a response to a challenge, whereas maltreated children’s physiology indicates disengagement (Lunkenheimer, Busuito, Brown, Panlilio, & Skowron, 2019).
Preschoolers’ task persistence profiles relate to later attention problems
More preschoolers show high task persistence with mothers than with fathers. Preschoolers whose persistence with mothers starts low and increases or stays stable across a task have the most teacher-rated attention problems in kindergarten; this relation was not found with fathers (Lunkenheimer, Lobo, Panlilio, Olson, & Hamby, 2019).
Physiological coregulation differs by maltreatment severity and subtype
Non-maltreating dyads show positive concordance of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), whereas maltreating dyads do not. Results show differences by subtype: physically abusive dyads show positive concordance and neglecting dyads show no concordance. For both subtypes, severity predicts discordant RSA (Lunkenheimer, Busuito, Brown, & Skowron, 2018).
Dyadic positive behavior coupling predicts decreasing problem behaviors
Children whose mothers respond to their autonomous behavior with further autonomy support exhibit fewer internalizing and externalizing problems over time; this pattern also relates to decreases in mothers’ harsh parenting. Effects appear unique to the dynamic coupling of autonomy-promotive behaviors (Lunkenheimer, Ram, Skowron, & Yin, 2017).
Mother-child joint persistence supports child mastery motivation
When mothers and children show greater joint persistence at a challenging task, it predicts children’s higher levels of mastery motivation in preschool. Children who persist at an impossible task, even after failing, show higher levels of concurrent self-regulation and higher levels of mastery motivation in preschool (Lunkenheimer & Wang, 2017).