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1. Parental Alcohol Use Predicts Neural Emotion Reactivity and Substance Use Intentions in Early Adolescence

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02724316241273414  

   Kisner, Mallory A; Gonçalves, Stefanie F; Fuchs, Allison M; Thompson, James C; Chaplin, Tara M (August 2024, The Journal of Early Adolescence)

   Parents’ alcohol use may influence adolescent substance use and substance use intentions. Prior research has linked adolescents’ emotion reactivity with parental drinking behaviors and adolescent substance use. The present study investigated whether sub-clinical maternal alcohol use relates to adolescent neural emotion reactivity and substance use intentions in early adolescence. Early adolescents ( N = 70) viewed emotional images during a fMRI scan and completed a questionnaire about substance use intentions. Their mothers reported past 30-day alcohol use. Results showed that greater frequency of maternal alcohol use predicted adolescents’ substance use intentions. In addition, maternal alcohol use predicted adolescent blunted responses to positive emotional images in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There was no relationship between neural emotion reactivity and adolescent substance use intentions. Findings suggest that parental alcohol use may relate to adolescent’s development of reward and positive emotion processing systems, even at sub-clinical levels of drinking. 

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2. Empathy for others versus for one's child: Associations with mothers’ brain activation during a social cognitive task and with their toddlers’ functioning

   https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22313  

   Ojha, Amar; Miller, Jonas G.; King, Lucy S.; Davis, Elena G.; Humphreys, Kathryn L.; Gotlib, Ian H. (July 2022, Developmental Psychobiology)

   Abstract Caregivers who are higher in dispositional empathy tend to have children with better developmental outcomes; however, few studies have considered the role of child‐directed (i.e., “parental”) empathy, which may be relevant for the caregiver–child relationship. We hypothesized that mothers’ parental empathy during their child's infancy will be a stronger predictor of their child's social‐emotional functioning as a toddler than will mothers’ dispositional empathy. We further explored whether parental and dispositional empathy have shared or distinct patterns of neural activation during a social‐cognitive movie‐watching task. In 118 mother–infant dyads, greater parental empathy assessed when infants were 6 months old was associated with more social‐emotional competencies and fewer problems in the children 1 year later, even after adjusting for dispositional empathy. In contrast, dispositional empathy was not associated with child functioning when controlling for parental empathy. In a subset of 20 mothers, insula activation was positively associated with specific facets of both dispositional and parental empathy, whereas right temporoparietal junction activation was associated only with parental empathy. Thus, dispositional and parental empathy appear to be dissociable by both brain and behavioral metrics. Parental empathy may be a viable target for interventions, especially for toddlers at risk for developing social‐emotional difficulties. 

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3. Caregivers’ positive emotion socialization tendencies are associated with positive affect in preschool age children

   https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.22036  

   Hill, Kaylin E.; Kujawa, Autumn; Humphreys, Kathryn L. (February 2023, Infant Mental Health Journal)

   Abstract Longstanding theories of emotion socialization postulate that caregiver emotional and behavioral reactions to a child's emotions together shape the child's emotion displays over time. Despite the notable importance of positive valence system function, the majority of research on caregiver emotion socialization focuses on negative valence system emotions. In the current project, we leveraged a relatively large cross‐sectional study of caregivers (N = 234; 93.59% White) of preschool aged children to investigate whether and to what degree, caregiver (1) emotional experiences, or (2) external behaviors, in the context of preschoolers’ positive emotion displays in caregiver–child interactions, are associated with children's general positive affect tendencies. Results indicated that, in the context of everyday caregiver–child interactions, caregiver‐reported positively valenced emotions but not approach behaviors were positively associated with child general positive affect tendencies. However, when examining specific caregiver behaviors in response to everyday child positive emotion displays, caregiver report of narrating the child's emotion and joining in the emotion with their child was positively associated with child general positive affect tendencies. Together, these results suggest that in everyday caregiver–child interactions, caregivers’ emotional experiences and attunement with the child play a role in shaping preschoolers’ overall tendencies toward positive affect. 

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4. Emotion understanding and maternal sensitivity as protective factors against hostile attribution bias in anger‐prone children

   https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12336  

   Wong, Maria S.; Chen, Xi; McElwain, Nancy L. (October 2018, Social Development)

   Abstract The present research examined children’s anger proneness, emotion understanding, and maternal sensitivity during toddlerhood as predictors of children’s hostile attribution bias (HAB) during the later preschool years. At 2.8 years (N = 128), maternal sensitivity (e.g., child‐centered behavior) was observed during mother–child play and snack, and parents reported on children’s anger proneness. At 3.3 years, emotion understanding (i.e., ability to identify emotional expressions accurately) was measured via an interactive puppet interview. At 4.8 and 5.4 years, children's HAB was assessed via child responses to hypothetical vignettes of ambiguous peer provocations. Path models revealed that maternal sensitivity predicted fewer hostile attributions. In addition, emotion understanding and maternal sensitivity emerged as buffers against the negative effect of anger proneness on HAB. Specifically, greater anger proneness was associated with more frequent hostile attributions, but only when children had lower emotion understanding or had mothers who were less sensitive. The findings highlight the interplay between intrapersonal and interpersonal factors in early childhood that contribute to a hostile attribution bias during the preschool period. 

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5. Attention Drives Emotion: Voluntary Visual Attention Increases Perceived Emotional Intensity

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619844231  

   Mrkva, Kellen; Westfall, Jacob; Van_Boven, Leaf (May 2019, Psychological Science)

   Attention and emotion are fundamental psychological systems. It is well established that emotion intensifies attention. Three experiments reported here ( N = 235) demonstrated the reversed causal direction: Voluntary visual attention intensifies perceived emotion. In Experiment 1, participants repeatedly directed attention toward a target object during sequential search. Participants subsequently perceived their emotional reactions to target objects as more intense than their reactions to control objects. Experiments 2 and 3 used a spatial-cuing procedure to manipulate voluntary visual attention. Spatially cued attention increased perceived emotional intensity. Participants perceived spatially cued objects as more emotionally intense than noncued objects even when participants were asked to mentally rehearse the name of noncued objects. This suggests that the intensifying effect of attention is independent of more extensive mental rehearsal. Across experiments, attended objects were perceived as more visually distinctive, which statistically mediated the effects of attention on emotional intensity. 

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