Effects of negative emotionality

Today I look at two studies that deal with interactions between child negative emotionality and parenting behavior. First, Rousseau & Frenkel (2023) published “The Importance of Differentiating between Cold and Hot Response Inhibition in the Parenting Context, When Examining Associations with Harsh Parenting” in Emotion. Here’s the edited abstract:

Harsh parenting (HP) entails physical and verbal expressions of anger and aggression toward children, usually observed as response to child negative emotionality. Abundant previous research has indicated the detrimental negative impacts of HP on children’s developing behavioral, cognitive social, and emotional capacities, highlighting the need for examining its determinants. Among other determinants, previous research has suggested the importance of parents’ cognitive regulatory capacity for inhibiting inappropriate behavioral responses (response inhibition; RI). Specifically, parents’ RI may help prevent the translation of harsh tendencies into HP behavior. Previous research in the field has typically focused on investigating parents’ trait capacities of RI, though particular state capacities of RI in the context of children’s negative emotions might be more relevant. The current study is the first to investigate whether the latter more specifically associates with HP. Data were collected in 2019. Participants were 98 first-time parents (Mage = 31.85 years, SDage = 4.22), 68.0% mothers. Parents completed a computerized Go/No-Go paradigm, measuring RI in seven different background conditions: one neutral-gray background condition and six emotional face background conditions (infant negative/positive/neutral emotional faces and adult negative/positive/neutral emotional faces). Next, participants reported on their HP. Results indicated that parents’ RI was significantly lower in infant emotional contexts, as compared to adult emotional contexts. Moreover, parents’ RI was significantly lower in infant negative emotional contexts, compared to infant positive emotional contexts and infant neutral emotional contexts. Importantly, lower RI in infant negative emotional contexts is associated with increased HP. These results have important implications for affective science as well as practical implications for early detection and intervention of HP tendencies toward infants. 

We’ve looked before at response inhibition in children, but I like this study of its impacts on parenting. I find it sad but not surprising that parents are less able to engage in response inhibition with infants than adults. It is reasonable to expect the connection between poor response inhibition to infant negative emotionality and increased harsh parenting. The next study looks at academic achievement. Collet et al. (2023) published “Does Early Child Negative Emotionality Moderate the Association between Maternal Stimulation and Academic Readiness and Achievement? in Child Development. Here are edited excerpts from the article:

We investigated whether child temperament (negative emotionality, 5 months) moderated the association between maternal stimulation (5 months–2½ years) and academic readiness and achievement (vocabulary, mathematics, and reading). We applied structural equation modeling to the data from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (N = 1121–1448; mostly Whites; 47% girls). Compared to children with low negative emotionality, those with high negative emotionality had higher levels of academic readiness (6 years) and mathematics achievement (7 years) when exposed to high levels of maternal stimulation (β = 3.17, p < .01 and β = 2.91, p < .01, respectively). The results support the differential susceptibility model whereby highly emotionally negative children were more susceptible to the influences of low and high levels of maternal stimulation in academic readiness and mathematics achievement's developments. 

[N]egative emotionality is a core aspect of temperament that is expressed with frequent, intense, or lasting episodes of anger, sadness, and frustration. These negative emotions often interfere with behaviors critical to academic success, such as motivation, concentration, and social interactions. . . . As postulated by the bioecological system theory (Bronfenbrenner et al., 1998), child characteristics interact with proximal processes (i.e., parent–child interactions) to frame child development. Thus, to understand how children develop, it is imperative to understand parent–child interactions, that is how the association between parenting and child development may be moderated by child characteristics.

Interestingly, our results supported the differential susceptibility model regarding academic readiness (especially identification of numbers, counting, and spatial recognition) and mathematics achievement. While it was not the case for receptive vocabulary and reading achievement measures, with which maternal stimulation level was positively associated independently from infant negative emotionality, these results are in line with discrepancies shown in previous results that have reported inconsistent associations between infant negative emotionality and child vocabulary and reading achievements. Similarly, these results are consistent with a study in which infant negative emotionality has been associated with mathematics achievement, although the mechanisms underlying this association are not yet completely understood. As negative emotionality has been negatively associated with executive functions, it is possible that child negative emotionality overwhelms higher cognitive processes required for mathematics achievements (e.g., recollection, cognitive flexibility, problem-solving). Our results add to this literature by suggesting that the opportunities for dyadic interactions with the environment provided by child positive and negative emotionality can modify the acquisition of non-verbal (i.e., mathematical and spatial) skills, but not the acquisition of verbal skills (i.e., reading and vocabulary). They also add to the literature about the differential susceptibility model by reinforcing our knowledge about the role of child negative emotionality as a sensibility factor. Especially, while previous studies have suggested that child negative emotionality may be a vulnerability factor when exposed to inefficient or unresponsive parenting—in line with the diathesis-stress model, our results suggest that child negative emotionality may be a sensibility factor to environmental influences that could be overlooked when investigating the association between parenting and child academic achievement. 

In conclusion, the results of the present study showed an interaction between children's negative emotionality and maternal stimulation in infancy, when used to predict important aspects of children's academic readiness and achievement at 5 and 6 years, thus supporting the differential susceptibility model. While all children probably benefit from maternal stimulation during their cognitive development, highly emotionally negative children are particularly sensitive to such stimulation, which may have long-term impacts on school readiness and academic performance. Given the importance of early academic readiness and achievement for later personal health and economic productivity, it is crucial to understand how to provide optimal support to highly emotionally negative children. Thus, early parenting interventions aiming to support mothers in dealing with highly emotionally negative infants may improve academic readiness and achievement for these children.

I thought that this study is helpful in capturing the subtlety of parent-child interaction. It reminds us of the highly sensitive nature of children high in negative emotionality and their differential susceptibility to maternal stimulation. I also find it especially interesting that negative emotionality may overwhelm higher cognitive processes. Taken together, these studies suggest important roles of parental capacities for response inhibition and maternal stimulation in providing appropriate responses to infants and young children high in negative emotionality.