Lab Studies:

Mothers and Preschoolers Study

The Mothers and Preschoolers Study considers the expectation that children’s propensity towards angry emotional reactivity interferes with their development of competent emotion regulation by disrupting parenting. First, the intense emotional arousal associated with angry emotional reactions may be more difficult for young children to regulate on their own. Second, children’s unregulated anger likely evokes similar angry responses from parents, or harsh parenting reactions that further interfere with children’s ability to regulate emotional arousal. Failing to learn how to regulate angry emotional arousal during early childhood leaves children unprepared to cope with interpersonal conflicts in socially accepted ways upon entry into school.

Previous research studying children’s development of emotion regulation has relied on well educated, middle class samples. Economically disadvantaged children are over-identified in terms of emotion regulation problems (e.g., externalizing problems), yet understudied in terms of social interactional processes affecting the acquisition of regulatory competence. In order to address this research gap, 180 Head Start preschool children (ages 3-4), their mothers, and their younger siblings (age 2) are participating in a longitudinal research project. Mothers, Head Start children, and younger siblings complete in three assessments near the younger siblings’ second, third, and fourth birthdays. Families complete a series of activities designed to assess children’s emotions, emotion regulation, and mothers parenting. Interviews occur in families’ homes and are videotaped.

Parent-child reciprocities during early childhood may be critical process mechanisms affecting children’s for social and emotional adjustment upon entry into school. Understanding how parent-child interactions affect children’s acquisition and generalization of regulatory efforts may improve the efficacy and accuracy of interventions designed to diminish children’s risk for social-emotional problems during childhood.

Early Growth and Development Study

The Early Growth and Development Study is a study of more than 350 children adopted at birth. In order to more fully understand the complex interplay between nature and nurture, adopted children’s birth parents and adoptive parents also participate in the study. This longitudinal project follows families as children traverse through the toddlerhood period. As part of the study, adoptive parents and their child participate in in-home assessments of their adopted child when children are 9, 18, and 27 months of age.

Recently, we received funding to extend our assessment of these families through the kindergarten period. In addition, we have received funding to recruit and assess an additional 200 children, birth parents, and adoptive parents to the study. The Early Growth and Development study is currently the largest study of adopted children, birth parents, and adoptive parents.

The study builds on important developments in understanding the relationship between heredity and family environment in child development. Traditional thinking was that nature OR nurture influences a child's development. More recent research is showing that both nature AND nurture are closely connected and both, together, may influence the same area of a child’s development. More information about the project can be found at http://www.gwumc.edu/cfr/earlydevelopment/.

Family Transitions Project

The Family Transitions Project (FTP) is a longitudinal study of more than 550 target youth and their families. The FTP represents an extension of two earlier studies: the Iowa Youth and Families Project (IYFP) and the Iowa Single Parent Project (ISPP).

The IYFP began in response to the farm crisis that affected rural areas in the Midwest, particularly Iowa, in the 1980s. In 1989, IYFP recruited 451 families from rural counties in central Iowa, including a target seventh grade child, his or her two biological parents, and a sibling within four years of the target child's age. The purpose of the study was to assess the processes involved in the transition from childhood to adolescence, as well as to understand the broader socioeconomic stress created by economic hardship in the family of origin. Data were gathered through telephone interviews and in-home visits from multiple informants including each of the family members participating in the study, trained observers who rated videotapes of family discussions and interactions in the homes, and teachers of the target children.

The ISPP began in 1991 as a 3-wave panel study or 210 adolescents, their mothers and a close-aged sibling. The mothers in this study had experienced divorce in the two years (1989 - 1990) prior to the beginning of the study. Most of the measures used in the ISPP were identical to the IYFP measure, and 108 of the adolescents were the same age as the target IYFP adolescents.

In 1994, the families from IYFP and SPP were combined to form the Family Transitions Project, creating a group of 559 adolescents, all of whom were in the twelfth grade. Beginning in 1995, the study focus shifted from the family in which the youths were raised to the emerging families and relationships they were creating, including spouses, romantic partners, and, by 1997, children of the targets. In 2006, children of the targets ranged in age from 18 months to 13 years old. Age thirteen is the year that the target parent joined the study. The young adults in the study and their families are contacted each year, and nearly 90 percent of the original targets continue to participate in yearly assessments.  

Currently, the project is funded by three federal grants totaling nearly $10 million. More information regarding the investigative team can be found at http://www.isbr.iastate.edu/.

Lab Research Interests:

Dr. Laura Scaramella, Tucson, Arizona

• How children’s propensity towards emotional reactivity interacts with parents’ childrearing style during early childhood to affect children’s risk for developing problem behavior during childhood and adolescence
• Social and economic mechanisms associated with the intergenerational transfer of parenting and problem behavior risk
• The additive and interactive influences of genes and environment on children’s risk for developing problem behaviors
• The role of parental reinforcement patterns on children’s acquisition of emotion regulation and generalization of emotion regulation strategies to interactions involving siblings and peers.

Scott Mirabile, M.S., 5th year graduate student, New Orleans, Louisiana

• The socialization of emotion regulation and how parent- and child-factors influence the socialization process:
• The role of children's temperamental negative reactivity in the socialization process
• The roles of mother's cognitive and emotional competence as contributors to the socialization process
• How mothers' and children's contingent emotion-related responses foster children's emotional competence 
• Future interests include the influence of mothers' and children's language in the socialization process and application of dynamical/nonlinear systems approaches to understanding the socialization of emotion regulation

Thesis Title: Maternal and Temperamental Influences on Children’s Emotion Regulation

Kristin Callahan, M.S., 4th year graduate student, Stone Mountain, Georgia

• The contextual factors that promote maladaptive parenting that lead to problematic internalizing and externalizing behavior in toddlers
• Evaluating the role of religion in the family and community in high risk populations as it pertains to parenting and child socialization
• Assessing children’s adjustment into formal schooling and evaluating the functions of the protective and risk factors associated with this milestone

Thesis Title: The Direct and Interactive Effects of Neighborhood Disadvantage and Harsh Parenting on Child Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems