Dynamic analysis of mother-preschooler interactions: Understanding its role in the associations between maternal emotion dysregulation and child psychopathology.

Theory and research highlight the role of maternal emotion socialization in the development of emotion dysregulation and associated psychopathology in offspring. This study described and quantified emotion socialization dynamics (i.e., mutual negativity and positivity) between mothers and their preschool-aged children, testing associations between dyadic dynamics and maternal emotion dysregulation and examining the predictive power of dyadic dynamics for symptoms of child psychopathology. Participants were 76 mother-child dyads (mothers: 22-46 years old, M = 33.17 (4.83); children 36-47 months old, M = 42.40 (3.78), 55.6% female, 47% racial/ethnic minoritized status) who completed frustration-eliciting and naturalistic play tasks. Child emotions and mothers' emotion socialization behaviors were coded. Mutual negativity during play was positively associated with mother-rated child aggression (β = 0.25, p = .017), whereas mutual positivity during play was negatively associated with teacher-rated attention (β = 0.35, p = .001) and internalizing problems (β = -0.25, p = .011). Findings suggest that mother-child dynamics during play may have unique associations with child mental health symptoms and highlight the utility of examining emotion socialization as a dyadic process.