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Adolescent depression is a serious public health concern, warranting examination of its development. A negative family emotional climate (NFEC) is one risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms. The specific emotion regulatory processes linking NFEC and depression, however, remain unclear. Cognitive reappraisal, a strategy that entails shifting one's thoughts about an emotion eliciting situation before the emotion is generated, expressive suppression, an emotion regulation strategy where individuals push down their expressions of an emotion after it is generated, and emotional inertia, the process of remaining in a given emotional state for a longer period compared to other individuals, were tested as potential emotion processes through which NFEC might be indirectly related to depressive symptoms. Adolescents (N = 92; ages 11-18; 62% girls, 80% White) participated in a multimethod two-time-point study (∼6 months apart). NFEC was measured at Time 1; cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, emotional inertia, and depressive symptoms, at Time 2. Emotional inertia scores for negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) were obtained through continuous coding of affect during 2 parent-child interactions. Codes were analyzed second-by-second, and multilevel logistic regression was used to extract each participant's emotional inertia score. NFEC was directly related to depressive symptoms. NFEC was also indirectly related to depressive symptoms via cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression (for girls, not boys) but not emotional inertia (for either NA or PA). Results suggest that both emotion regulation and the family emotional climate should be considered as targets for intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives The current study investigated whether a maladaptive family environment would moderate the strength of the relations of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder inattention (ADHD-IN) and to depressive symptoms in a large sample of college students. Methods Participants (n = 3,172), between the ages of 18-29 (M ± SDage = 19.24 ± 1.52; 69.8% women; 80.4% White) and enrolled in five universities in the United States completed self-report measures of symptomatology, interparental conflict, and family expressiveness of emotions. Results A negative emotional climate strengthened relations of SCT with ADHD-IN and depressive symptoms. Moreover, the lack of a positive emotional climate strengthened the co-occurrence of SCT with depressive symptoms, though not with ADHD-IN. Conclusions The current study is the first to demonstrate that the family environment moderates the association between SCT and co-occurring symptomatology in young adults.

Depression is associated with blunted reward functioning. It remains unknown, however, whether depression is linked to diminished motivation to approach reward across categories of reward stimuli, or if depression is differentially related to approach motivation. The current study tested associations between depression and behavioral approach motivation to specific reward stimuli (i.e., money, social, food reward). In a two-visit study, university females (N = 122, M age = 18.67) completed measures of depression and three behavioral approach motivation tasks (completed across visits). Differential findings emerged across behavioral reward tasks. Specifically, depressive symptoms were associated with decreased motivation to approach monetary and social reward but increased motivation to approach food reward. Results suggest a category-specific conceptualization of depressive symptomatology in relation to behavioral approach motivation, whereby women with elevated symptoms may be less likely to approach certain rewards, but more likely to approach others.

The goal of the current investigation was to test emotion dysregulation as a mechanism explaining the longitudinal association between peer rejection and depressive symptoms across 1 school year in middle childhood and to determine whether this process differed based on gender and grade. Youth in Grades 3 through 6 ( N = 131; 71 girls) and their primary school teachers ( n = 8) were recruited from a Midwestern elementary school. Youth reported on their emotion dysregulation and depressive symptoms at two time points (T1 and T2), approximately 6 months apart. Teachers completed ratings of peer rejection at T1. Peer rejection at T1 predicted youth-report of depressive symptoms at T2, even after controlling for depression at T1. Moderated mediation suggested that change in emotion dysregulation mediated the relation of peer rejection to depressive symptoms over time, but only for older boys. Results underscore the importance of considering gender-specific processes within interpersonal risk models of depression, and provide support for peer rejection as a critical social process shaping emotion regulation in middle childhood.

The current study tested if proximal transmission of positive and negative affect occurs bidirectionally between mothers and their adolescent children in valence-specific patterns (e.g., maternal positive affect to adolescent positive, but not negative, affect) across a period of 7 minutes and between minutes. Whether adolescent gender moderated transmission effects was also explored. One hundred thirty-5 mothers (29-60 years old) and their children (12-16 years old, 49% female) independently completed questionnaires and then jointly engaged in a naturalistic 7-min problem-solving discussion. Transmission was examined by testing how 1 person's expressed affect (assessed observationally) changed the other person's self-reported state affect across the task. In path analyses, support for bidirectional transmission of negative affect emerged. Transmission was valence-specific, however, evidence for transmission of positive affect was not found. Results also supported cross-valence transmission of negative affect specifically from adolescents to their mothers, such that adolescent expressed negative affect predicted reduced maternal self-reported positive affect. Utilizing cross-lagged path analyses to further examine these findings between minutes revealed that transmission did not occur between specific minutes. Results largely support previous theoretical work on the orthogonal structure of affect and the bidirectionality of parent-adolescent affective interactions. Given this evidence for reciprocal transmission of affect across (not between) minutes in a microsocial context, implications for successful emotion coregulation in parent-adolescent interactions and how these mechanisms may predict long-term outcomes are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record.

The current study tests the underlying structure of a multidimensional construct of helicopter parenting (HP), assesses reliability of the construct, replicates past relations of HP to poor emotional functioning, and expands the literature to investigate links of HP to emerging adults’ decision-making and academic functioning. A sample of 377 emerging adults (66% female; ages 17-30; 88% European American) were administered several items assessing HP as well as measures of other parenting behaviors, depression, anxiety, decision-making style, grade point average, and academic functioning. Exploratory factor analysis results suggested a four-factor, 23-item measure that encompassed varying levels of parental involvement in the personal and professional lives of their children. A bifactor model was also fit to the data and suggested the presence of a reliable overarching HP factor in addition to three reliable subfactors. The fourth subfactor was not reliable and item variances were subsumed by the general HP factor. HP was found to be distinct from, but correlated in expected ways with, other reports of parenting behavior. HP was also associated with poorer functioning in emotional functioning, decision making, and academic functioning. Parents’ information-seeking behaviors, when done in absences of other HP behaviors, were associated with better decision making and academic functioning.

The current review examines characteristics of temporal affective functioning at both the individual and dyadic level. Specifically, the review examines the following three research questions: (1) How are dyadic affective flexibility and emotional inertia operationalized, and are they related to youth psychopathology? (2) How are dyadic affective flexibility and emotional inertia related, and does this relation occur at micro- and meso-timescales? and (3) How do these constructs combine to predict clinical outcomes? Using the Flex3 model of socioemotional flexibility as a frame, the current study proposes that dyadic affective flexibility and emotional inertia are bidirectionally related at micro- and meso-timescales, which yields psychopathological symptoms for youth. Specific future directions for examining individual, dyadic, and cultural characteristics that may influence relations between these constructs and psychopathology are also discussed.