MASTER’S THESIS
EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVITY AND VARIABILITY DURING PARENT-ADOLESCENT INTERACTIONS: THE ROLE OF ANXIETY RISK AND GENDER.
Margalida Caimari Ferragut
Master’s Degree in General Sanitary Psychology Centre for Postgraduate Studies
Academic Year 2020-2021
Emotional expressivity and variability during parents- adolescent interactions: the role of anxiety risk and gender.
Margalida Caimari Ferragut
Master’s Thesis
Centre for Postgraduate Studies University of the Balearic Islands
Academic Year 2020-2021
Key words:
Emotion dynamics, emotional variability, negative emotional valence, parent-adolescent interactions, risk of anxiety, state space grids.
Thesis Supervisor’s Name Maria Balle Cabot
Abstract
This study examined differences in emotional expressivity and emotional variability between parent-adolescent interactions depending on risk of anxiety and gender. The sample consisted of 29 families (father, mother and adolescent), 13 adolescents with low-risk of anxiety (33.3% girls;
13.3 mean age) and 16 adolescents with high-risk of anxiety (66.7% girls; 13.8 mean age).
Father-adolescent and mother-adolescent dyads were videotaped while discussing a conflict.
Measures of emotional expressivity (negative emotional valence) and emotional variability (transitions, dispersion, average duration) were analysed using the state space grid. No
differences were found in parent-adolescent negative emotional valence despite adolescent’s risk of anxiety. Mother-adolescent dyads with adolescents with low risk of anxiety had higher levels of negative emotional valence than father-adolescent dyads. Less emotional variability (lower levels of transitions between emotional states) was found in parent-adolescent dyads with high risk of anxiety than in those ones with low risk of anxiety. No differences existed in dispersion and average duration regardless of anxiety group or gender. Taking all the above mentioned into consideration, findings highlighted the importance of considering emotional variability in the development, prevention and treatment of adolescent anxiety.
Index
Introduction ... 5
Method ... 8
Participants ... 8
Instruments ... 9
Adolescent’s Risk Of Anxiety ... 9
Adolescent’s Psychopathological Screening ... 10
Parent’s Psychological Assessment ... 10
Parent’s Psychopathology ... 10
Procedure ... 11
Data Acquisition and Pre-processing ... 11
Negative Emotional Valence ... 12
Emotional Variability... 13
Analytic Strategy ... 13
Results ... 14
Discussion ... 16
References ... 19
Annexe ... 24
Introduction
Many anxiety disorders (AD) emerge during adolescence (Casey, Jones, & Hare, 2008; Kessler, Berglund, Demler, Jin & Walters, 2005; Lee et al., 2014), in the transition from childhood to adulthood. This developmental period is marked by parents-adolescent relationship, which is a key factor in youngsters’ emotion regulation (ER). Difficulties in ER are considered an important factor in the development and maintenance of many psychopathological disturbances, including AD (Sloan et al., 2017). Anxiety disorders tend to have an early onset, being the most prevalent mental disorder in adolescence, with a lifetime prevalence of 31.9% in 13-18 year-old
adolescents (Essau, Conradt, & Peterman, 2002; Merikangas, 2010). Thus, it implies serious health consequences in later life and have a negative impact on cognitive, behavioral and social functions (Mohammadi et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, its etiology is not entirely clear (Beidel & Alfano, 2011), which makes it difficult to establish clear trajectories towards its appearance, early detection, and effective prevention of AD.
A large amount of research has suggested that some maladaptive ER strategies may contribute to the development of anxiety among youth (Compas, Gruhn, & Betis, 2017;
Schneider, Arch, Landy, & Hankin, 2018). Therefore, adolescents with AD tend to have a dysregulation of negative affect, associated with a deficit in positive affect (Hoffman, Sawyer, Fang & Asnaani, 2012). This emotional dysregulation (ED) is one of the main mechanisms involved in anxiety, as it affects one’s capacity to adaptively deal with demanding situations and conflicts.
Both the high incidence of anxiety and the inconclusive data on ED at this age justify addressing the focus of research on this developmental stage.
Adolescence is a developmental period which demands progressive renegotiation of roles and methods of interaction. As a consequence, conflicts tend to increase and it seems to play an important role in this relationship (Rognli, Waraan, Czajkowski, Solbakken & Aalberg, 2020).
More specifically, child-parent relationship has been highlighted as a key factor in adolescent’s cognition, emotion and behaviors (Itahasi et al., 2019; Morris et al., 2017). Furthermore, parents’
interactions have a role in the development of ER (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers & Robinson, 2007). A thorough assessment of these interactions, will provide valuable information for a better understanding of ER and the early onset of anxiety in adolescence.
The Nonlinear Dynamic Systems theory considers parent-child interactions as a complex dynamical system evolving in time. Therefore, ER is understood as a dynamic process in which both parent and child take part (Butler, 2011). So, each member of the family represents a variable and, together, create an organized system (Vallacher et al., 2002).
Most research has studied children’s and parent’s ER skills separately and with static measures such as questionnaires. However, such measures may be too simplistic and limited in utility because they miss the range of emotional tendencies and the relationships through which these tendencies are expressed (Granic, 2005). This approach also misses the interrelated and contextually specific emotions that children and parents experience during day-to-day
interactions (Van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018). These real-life interactions between parents and adolescents are known as parent-adolescent dyads. Dyads can be defined from a dynamic systems approach as an interconnected system with particular properties that affect each other over the course of time. Both partners are continuously active in the communication, and each partner’s emotions are adjusted by the actions of the other partner. Individuals also dynamically modify their emotions with respect to the ongoing and anticipated emotions of their partners (Van der Giessen et al., 2015).
Thus, what should be studied are the conditions and situations in which adolescents move from one emotional steady state to another and how we can impulse more adaptive behavioral tendencies and minimize disadaptive patterns (Granic, 2005).
The interlinked nature of children’s and parent’s emotions during these interactions has been proven, as well as the relation between problems in parent-child ER and the development of AD. However, less research had studied this in tandem (Van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018).
Emotional functioning is influenced by how dyads adjust and control emotions according to contextual demands. Thus, during interactions, emotional responses should be flexible and adaptable to changing situations. Investigating at this dyadic level might contribute to
understanding ER and, therefore, having a better insight into AD.
Within the framework of research in ER, some concepts stand out. Firstly, emotional expressivity is the expression of positive and negative affect in emotionally charged situations (Hannesdottir & Ollendick, 2007) and is thought to be associated with socio-emotional
functioning of both interaction partners of the dyad. Emotionally expressive interactions are more adaptive, and marked by more positive affect and moderate levels of negative affect. On
the other hand, inexpressive dyads are considered to be a reflection of a poor family atmosphere.
Research has also shown that highly negative emotional dyads (called negative emotional valence) could show an inadequate ER. Therefore, adolescents with AD have difficulties in expressing emotions during dyads (Suveg, Morelen, Brewer & Thomassin, 2010).
Moreover, ED is characterized by limited skills to control and adjust emotions, which influences negatively in interpersonal relationships. Adolescents with anxiety demonstrate ED when they try to avoid intense emotional reactions, showing less adaptive coping, which is usually desadaptive (Hannesdottir & Ollendick, 2007). Furthermore, adolescents ED is influenced by the family emotional environment, through a lack of the necessary skills for an adequate emotional functioning. In fact, some studies showed lower levels of emotional
expressivity in adolescents and parents with an AD compared with those non-clinical, displaying less positive emotions during discussions (Hudson et al., 2008; Suveg et al., 2005).
Secondly, returning to the concept of a healthy ER, emotional variability is a relevant marker of parent-adolescents dyads. It implies the ability to flexibly switch among a broad range of emotional states during interactions (Butler, 2011). Thus, some studies have observed that less variable interaction behavior (i.e., more rigid) shows a tendency to remain in very few emotions and it is associated with an increased risk for internalizing youth problems (Van der Giessen et al., 2013). Indeed, less emotional variability of mother-child dyads has been associated with more anxiety symptoms of adolescents (Van der Giessen et al., 2015).
In contrast, more variability is associated with an adequate ER and well-being. It seems that dyads with high levels of emotional variability adapt and regulate their emotions better, which is linked with well-being (Granic, 2005).
It has been shown that during conflict interactions, adolescents with AD showed lower levels of emotional variability than adolescents with no clinical conditions in parent-adolescent dyads during negative content interactions (Van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018)
Although some studies provide support for a connection between emotional variability of parent-child dyads and internalizing problems, it is unknown whether it is also associated with adolescent’s risk of anxiety. Therefore, the early detection of these patterns in subclinical anxiety could be relevant for a better knowledge and potential of the AD.
Differences between father-adolescent dyads and mother-adolescent dyads were investigated as well as the effects of adolescent’s risk of anxiety on dyadic emotional
expressivity and dyadic emotional variability. The main objective is to study the role of risk of anxiety and gender within socio-emotional interactions between parents and adolescents. More specifically, we are interested in studying negative emotional valence and emotional variability in parent-adolescent dyads considering adolescents risk of anxiety, and the gender of the dyad members. Previous studies have frequently investigated mother-child dyads, but the relationship between fathers and adolescents with risk of anxiety has been rarely studied and that could play a different role.
Based on previous research, we expected that parent-child dyads involving at-risk adolescents would have more negative emotions during interactions than interactions where the child was not at risk. Regarding variability, we expected that conflict interactions involving at- risk adolescents would be less variable than those where the child was not at risk.
Regarding gender, we made an exploratory analysis to examine it.
Method Participants
The sample of this study was part of a research project called “Complejidad de la Regulación Emocional en Adolescentes en Riesgo de Ansiedad: un Análisis Multimétodo y Multinivel”. This Project, which has three phases, was conducted at the University of Balearic Islands and
participants were part of the second one. In the first phase, adolescents were from nine high schools of Majorca (randomly selected), where they were assessed for their risk of developing AD based on two self-reported measures (sensitivity to punishment and anxious
symptomatology).
All students of the first study were invited to participate in the second study and finally 89 decided to take part in it. Participants voluntarily took part in with both parents or at least the father (biological and nonbiological ones). Inclusions criteria were not having a psychiatric disorder and not being in psychological or psychiatric treatment. For that reason, five parent- adolescent dyads were excluded, as they presented some mental illness (social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder and a recent loss in their family). For the present study, we were interested in both mother and father interactions, so another inclusion criteria was that we only accepted families with both parent’s interactions. Thereby, we evaluated 55 families.
In preliminary analysis, we found that 22 of these 55 families, were adolescents who had a “medium risk of anxiety” (score between 25th and 75th percentile in variables named above) and 4 more were outliers. The final sample was composed of 29 families.
This sample was distributed in two anxiety risk groups. Participants of “high risk of anxiety” (n=16) scored equal or greater than the 75th percentile in the variables named above.
The group of “low risk for anxiety” (n=13) were adolescents with scores equal or less than 25th percentile.
In the end, the final sample of the present study was composed by 29 families: 29 fathers (M age= 47.21, SD=5.348), 29 mothers (M age=46.28, SD=4.735) and 29 adolescents, which were categorized in two groups: 16 adolescents with high risk of anxiety (M age=13.28, SD=.719, 50% girls), and 13 adolescents with low risk of anxiety (M age=13.92, SD=1.038, 30.8% girls).
It should be noted that all families provided written consent and the study was authorized by the University’s Bioethics Committee.
Instruments
Adolescent’s Risk Of Anxiety
The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) (Chorpita, et al., 2000) is a self-report questionnaire which has 47-items to assess anxiety and depression symptoms with six sub-scales: separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic
disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder. There is an overall scale indicating the total level of anxiety symptomatology. The RCADS requires adolescents to rate how often each item applies to them, using a zero to three ranging, where 0 corresponds to
“never”, 1 corresponds to “sometimes”, 2 means “often” and 3 constitutes “always”. The internal consistency of the overall anxiety scale which was the only used in this study was α = .953.
The Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire-Junior (SPSRQ-J) (Torrubia et al., 2008) is a 30-item self-report questionnaire and each item has a dichotomous yes or no answer. It is composed by two subscales: sensitivity to punishment and sensitivity to reward, based on Gray’s Theory of Sensitivity to Reinforcement, In the present study, we only used the Sensitivity to Punishment scale (Cronbach’s α=. 827), since it was the only relevant to classify adolescents in different anxiety risk groups. This scale was ‘‘designed to measure individual differences in some functions dependent on the BIS in checking and control modes:
(1) behavioural inhibition (passive avoidance) in general situations involving the possibility of aversive consequences or novelty; and (2) worry or cognitive processes produced by threat of punishment or failure’’ (Torrubia et al., 2001, p. 844). The SPSRQ-J retains the assessment of cognitive anxiety reactions when one is coping with threatening conditions, adding items asking about passive avoidance tendencies (Balle, Tortella-Feliu & Bornas, 2013).
Adolescent’s Psychopathological Screening
The Shedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime version (K-SADS-PL) (Kaufman et al., 1997) is a semi-structured clinical interview which assesses current and lifetime psychiatric history. The K-SADS-PL integrates parent- adolescent interviews. Therefore, diagnoses are generated by synthesizing parent and child data based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV, American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In the present study, this interview was used as a screening to detect any mental disorders in adolescents. The presence of any present psychiatric disorder in the adolescents was an exclusion criteria of the present study.
Parent’s Psychological Assessment
The Overall Anxiety Severity and Impairment Scale (OASIS) (Norman, Cissell, Means- Christensen, & Stein, 2006) is a 5-item self-report instrument, which identifies AD while
determining the frequency and intensity of such anxiety, the functional impairment it causes and the degree of avoidance. The respondent has the instructions to think about experiences of anxiety and fear that occurred the past week. There are five distinct responses, ranging from 0 to 4 and the total score is obtained by adding all of them (Norman, et al., 2011). The internal consistency was α=.862.
The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ- 9) (Kroenke, Spitzer & Williams, 2001) was used in the three-item version (Kroenke, Spitzer, Williams, & Lowe, 2009). Respondents selecedt among four options, ranging from 1 (“Not at all”) to 4 (“Nearly every day”). The internal consistency was α=.627.
Parent’s Psychopathology
The Anxiety and Related Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-5, Adult version (ADIS- 5) (Brown & Barlow, 2014) is a structured interview used to diagnose anxiety, mood, bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, disorders related to traumatic events and related disorders (e.g. somatic
symptom, substance use) based on DSM-5 criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), which also allows differential diagnosis among these disorders. This interview also includes dimensional assessment, not only categorical, with answers ranging from 0 to 8, considering four points the cut-off point for determining if the respondent exceeds the DSM-5 diagnostic
threshold for the assessed disorder.
Procedure
Before the interaction, families first answered the pertinent tests and interviews about themselves: The K-SADS-PL was carried out to the adolescent while their parents answered separately the OASIS and PHQ-3 (screening questionnaires about themselves). The ADIS-5 was also administrated separately to both if scores of OASIS and PHQ-3 exceeded the cut-off point.
The K-SADS-PL was also conducted to parents to acquire more relevant information about the adolescent.
Afterwards, father-adolescent and mother-adolescent dyads were videotaped during an episode of ten minute’s conflict interaction, separately and in random order. The Issue Checklist (Robin & Weiss, 1980) was used to determine different topics for father-adolescent and mother- adolescent interactions, which included a variety of issues such as school activities (homework and exams), arguments with siblings, partying with friends, housework, failed subjects, and an open option, all of which had to have taken place in the last six months. Next, dyads were instructed by the researcher to speak about the topic of discussion they had agreed upon. They were seated in front of each other in a laboratory room, approximately two meters apart.
The interactions were videotaped with two different cameras, one focusing on the adolescent and the other focusing on the parent, to obtain a recording of each participant’s emotional output. A researcher was always present during the interactions.
Data Acquisition And Pre-processing
Parents and adolescent’s emotional expressivity were coded by two independent
researchers through the Simple Affect Coding System (SACS; Jacobson et al., 2003), which has been successfully applied in other studies (e.g. van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018). It is based on a combination of facial expressions, voice tone and physical cues to identify the affect/emotion expressed during each moment of the interaction. Therefore, five mutually excluding affects were coded: positive affect, validation, anger/disgust, distress and neutral.
Two coders were trained intensively to achieve a minimum interobserver criterion of 75 % agreement and .65 kappa. Randomly, twenty percent of the videotaped conflict interactions were independently coded by two coders, who were unaware of which sessions were used for observer agreement and were blind to adolescents’ risk of anxiety. Using an event-unit based comparison with a 3s tolerance window (Bakeman et al. 2009), the average inter-observer agreement was 82% (0.77 kappa) and 78% (0.71 kappa) for father-adolescent interactions with adolescents with high and low risk of anxiety, respectively; and 77% (0.72 kappa) and 80% (0.75 kappa) for mother-adolescent interactions with adolescents with high and low risk of anxiety, respectively.
Afterwards, emotional variability and emotional valence were analyzed using the State Space Grid (SSG) method (Lewis, Lamely & Douglas, 1999) using the software GridWare 1.15a (Lamey et al., 2004).
Grid-ware plots coded emotions (i.e., SACS affect codes) in real-time on state space grids. A grid represents all possible emotional combinations of a dyad, and each cell on the grid represents a potential emotional state of the dyad.
Parent’s coded emotions were plotted on the X axis and adolescent’s one on the Y axis.
When an emotion of parent, adolescent or both changes, a new point is mapped on the grid and a line is drawn joining it to the previous point. Thus, a grid illustrates a sequence of dyadic
emotions.
Negative Emotional Valence
In order to obtain negative emotional valence, the ratio of positive and negative affect dyads expressed during episodes was calculated. To enable it, we first calculated the duration in seconds of mutual positive and negative affect. Grids were divided into two distinct regions using the following SACS codes: positive affect contained positive affect and validation and negative affect contained distress and anger/disgust.
We excluded the mutual neutral cell on the grid to calculate negative emotional valence (Connel et al., 2011). Mutual neutral affect was the default affect code of the SACS coding system and, therefore, including it could cause distortions of the emotional variability measures.
For that reason, mutual neutral cell was excluded from the study (Van der Giessen et al., 2018) To calculate the percentage of positive and negative affect as a function of the total duration of the interaction, the duration of positive and negative affect was divided by the total
duration of the episode and then multiplied by 100 (Van der Giessen et al., 2015). At last, these two percentages were used and combined to calculate the negative emotional valence. This ratio symbolizes the proportion of positive versus negative affect of dyads during an interaction.
Higher scores demonstrated more negative affect than positive affect during episodes.
Emotional Variability
Emotional variability has often been assessed with three indices (Granic et al., 2003;
Hollenstein et al. 2004; Van der Giessen & Bögels, 2018; Van der Giessen et al., 2015). First, transitions were assessed, as the number of emotional states changes per minute between cells.
Higher values indicated more frequent changes between dyadic states. The second measure, dispersion, appraised as the spread of affects. Dispersion score ranges from 0, which means no dispersion, showing that behavior is focused in only one cell, to 1, the highest level of dispersion, showing that behavior is equally spread across cells. Third, average duration was estimated by calculating the mean duration of each emotional state. Opposite to the previous measures
(transitions and dispersions), higher scores showed more emotional rigidity as they tended to stay in emotional states for longer periods of time. Contrary, lower values indicated more emotional variability because there was a tendency to stay at affects for shorter periods of time.
These three measures of emotional variability were also computed excluding the mutual neural cell on the grid.
Analytic Strategy
Shapiro-Wilk test and Levene’s test were applied to carry out normality tests. Values of the Shapiro-Wilk Test were greater than 0.05, indicating that data was normal. Analysis of Levene’s test also revealed equal variances across samples. For this reason, Chi-square and t-test analyses were used to explore differences between groups in adolescent’s age and gender.
Negative emotional valence and variability measures presented four extreme univariate outliers. Due to the fact that extreme outliers could vary analyses of variance, we eliminated them to not distort results.
Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to determine group differences in emotional negative valence, with parent’s gender (father and mother) as within-subjects factor, and group (high-risk adolescents and low-risk adolescents) as a between factor.
Emotional variability measures (transition, dispersion and average duration) were carried out with the Z-scores (reversing average duration), because they had different scales. Group
differences in variability were analyzed equally using repeated measures ANOVAs, with
parent’s gender (father and mother) as within-subject’s factors, and group (high-risk adolescents and low-risk adolescents) as between-subjects factors. Post hoc tests (Bonferroni) were practiced in order to find out within-condition differences.
Analyses were executed using the IBM SPSS Statistics v.21 package.
Results
Descriptive statistic of all study variables is shown in Table 1. No significant differences were found in adolescent’s gender between groups.
In reference to low-risk adolescent’s family situation, 92.3% of adolescents lived with father, mother and siblings. The remaining 7.7% lived with father, mother without siblings.
High-risk adolescent’s family situation showed that 68.8% of them lived with father, mother and siblings. Another 6.3% of them lived with father, mother without siblings, while a 18.8% lived with father or mother, with siblings. The remaining 6.3% lived only with father or mother.
Table 1
Characteristics of low-risk adolescents and high-risk adolescents Low-Risk Adolescents
(n = 13)
High-Risk Adolescents
(n = 16) χ² (1) / t(27) p N (%) /M (SD) N (%) /M (SD)
Female 33.3%/ 66.7% 1.094 .296
Age 13.92 (1.038) 13.88 (.719) -.327 .746
Anxiety 13.307 (5.137) 35.062 (15.813)
SP 2.461 (1.808) 8.687 (2.701)
Note. SP: Sensitivity to punishment
Regarding parent’s mean age, fathers (M= 47.21, SD= 5.348) were slightly older than mothers (M= 46.28, SD= 4.735).
Repeated measures ANOVA of negative emotional valence revealed significant differences in parent’s gender (see Table 2) and no differences were found for the anxiety risk group.
For the whole sample, within-group effects (parent’s gender) revealed that mother-
adolescent dyads showed more negative affect than positive affect (negative emotional valence) than father-adolescent dyads.
Moreover, significant differences were also found in a multivariate interaction effect between parent’s gender and group of risk. For this interaction effect between parent’s gender and group of risk, post hoc analyses comparing anxiety risk groups were carried out, showing in adolescents with low risk of anxiety that mother-adolescent interactions presented higher levels of negative emotional valence than in father-adolescent interactions (p = .004). Thus, adolescents with low risk of AD displayed more negative affect than positive affect with mothers than with fathers.
Table 2
Repeated measures ANOVA of negative emotional valence and emotional variability for parents- adolescent’s dyads with high (n = 13) and low (n = 16) risk of anxiety.
Note: df= degrees of freedrom, Partial η2 = effect size Parent gender
Measures Father
M (SD)
Mother M (SD)
F (1, 27) Partial η2
Negative Emotional valence Low-risk anxiety group High-risk anxiety group
.180 (.159) .381 (.291)
.476 (.316) .430 (.288)
Parent’s gender: 8.833**
Risk group: .857
Parent’s gender x Risk group: 4.417**
.246 .031 .143 Emotional variability
Transitions
Low-risk anxiety group High-risk anxiety group
.202 (.767) -.252 (.615)
.295 (.872) -.224 (.583)
Parent’s gender: .241 Risk group: 4.38*
Parent’s gender x Risk group: .069
.009 .140 .003 Dispersion
Low-risk anxiety group High-risk anxiety group
.058 (.728) .547 (351)
.302 (.506) .354 (.533)
Parent’s gender: .043 Risk group: 2.868
Parent’s gender x Risk group: 3.255
.002 .096 .108 Average duration
Low-risk anxiety group High-risk anxiety group
-.334 (.493) -.187 (.645)
-.420 (.681) -.032 (.639)
Parent’s gender: .063 Risk group: 2.045
Parent’s gender x Risk group: .769
.002 .070 .028
* p < .005, ** p < .01, *** p < .001
Referring to emotional variability, repeated measures ANOVAs revealed no significant effect for parent’s gender and neither for group in any measure of emotional variability (see Table 2): transitions, dispersions and average duration.
Main effects showed that parent-child dyads with adolescents that had high risk of AD showed lower levels of transitions than parent-child dyads with adolescents that had low risk of AD (p = .046). Therefore, adolescents with high risk switched less between emotions than
adolescents with low risk of AD. No differences were found between groups of risk in dispersion and in average duration. Hence, parent-adolescent’s interactions with low and high risk of AD had similar emotional repertoire (dispersion) and spent similar time in each emotional state (average duration).
No multivariate interaction effects were found between parent’s gender and risk group in any measure of emotional variability.
Discussion
This study examined emotional dynamics during dyadic parent-adolescent conflict interactions.
Particularly, we analyzed differences in negative emotional valence and in emotional variability of parent-adolescent dyads with adolescents with low and high risk of anxiety.
Regarding negative emotional valence, our hypothesis was that parent-adolescent dyads with high risk of anxiety would have more negative emotions during interactions than parent- adolescent dyads with low risk of anxiety. This hypothesis was rejected because no differences in parent-adolescent negative emotional valence were found despite adolescent’s risk of anxiety.
Van der Giessen et al., 2018 reported similar findings, obtaining no differences either in negative and positive affect between parent-adolescent interactions with and without clinical AD. In contrast with some previous studies (Butler, 2011; Fogel, 1993; Granic 2005), levels of negative and positive affect did not differ depending on the anxiety risk group. Those studies do not examine parent’s and child’s individual emotions, as they study the influence of the whole dyad.
Interactions adjust individual’s emotions (Campos et al., 2011; Hinde, 1997) and, therefore, parent and child emotional states should not be examined in isolation (Granic & Patterson, 2006).
Concerning gender, our exploratory analysis revealed higher levels of negative emotional valence (more negative affect than positive affect) in mother-adolescent interactions than in
father-adolescent interactions. In particular, mother-adolescent dyads with adolescents with low risk of anxiety had higher levels of negative emotional valence than father-adolescent dyads.
That could be explained because, during conflict dyads, mothers typically discussed emotion more frequently than fathers did and, on a dyadic level, father-adolescent conflicts are less emotionally expressive than mother-adolescent interactions (Fivush et al. 2000; Van der Giessen et al. 2018). Father-adolescent and mother-adolescent interactions with high risk of anxiety had similar levels of negative emotional valence. Parent-adolescent interactions with high risk of anxiety may be more intense and induced more negative affect.
With respect to emotional variability, our hypothesis was that conflict interactions involving high-risk adolescents would be less variable than interactions where the adolescent was not at risk. This hypothesis was partially confirmed because less emotional variability (lower levels of transitions between emotional states) was found in parents-adolescent dyads with high risk of anxiety than in parents-adolescent dyads with low risk of anxiety. By contrast, no
differences in dispersion and average duration were found regardless of anxiety group or gender.
In line with previous studies, no differences were found between father-adolescent and mother- adolescent dyads, which may be a hallmark of healthy emotional functioning (Van der Giessen et al., 2018).
Our findings slightly differed from a previous study (Van der Giessen et al., 2018), which had a clinical sample of adolescents with AD. Dyads with anxiety disorder adolescents also showed less emotional repertory, but in Van der Giessen study’s case differences were shown in all emotional variability measures: dispersion, transitions and average duration. Possibly, the diagnostic condition may increase the frequency and intensity of variability outcomes, making them statistically significant. In our case, our subclinical sample does not have enough severity of symptoms to be statistically significant. In order to find more similarities to those found by the prior authors, future research should carry out these analyses with adolescents with clinical levels of AD.
Regarding gender, our exploratory analysis revealed no differences in emotional
variability between mother-adolescent and father-adolescent interactions. These findings are in line with previous studies (Van der Giessen et al., 2018), finding no differences between father- adolescent dyads and mother-adolescent dyads in emotional variability. There is little current literature about this, because most previous studies were focused on mother-adolescent dyads.
Our findings in emotional variability follow previous studies (Van der Giessen et al., 2018) and suggest that this variable might be a better indicator in detecting problematic emotional dynamics than negative emotional valence. There is emerging evidence that little emotional variability is associated with AD. These findings may contribute to a better
understanding of maladaptive dyadic interactions between parents and adolescent and, therefore, enhance the early detection of emotional rigidity and anxiety. They would also help to improve prevention of adolescents’ internalizing problems as we could promote more variable emotional responses and educate parents and adolescents on a healthy dynamic emotional repertoire.
We also should take some limitations in to consideration, addressed to future research.
First, the size of our groups was small, which affects the statistical accuracy to detect contrast effects of anxiety risk group and parent’s gender. Future studies with larger samples would be the key to improve our knowledge about emotional variability. Second, we were unable to infer causal relationships between adolescent’s risk of anxiety and problematic emotional variability, due to the cross-sectional nature of this study. A prospective longitudinal design could clarify if few levels of emotional variability precede adolescent’s anxiety or vice versa. Third, this study does not contemplate parent’s emotional problems. We only assessed clinical problems for inclusion criteria. Future research should consider parent’s psychopathology, as mother
internalizing problems had been associated with less emotional variability (Van der Giessen et al., 2015). Finally, we have only focused on emotional dynamics that occur within conflict interactions. Emotional variability should be studied in different contexts, since it may change in social conditions.
Despite these limitations, this study has several important strengths such as the
observational design, comparing adolescents with high and low risk of anxiety, studying the role of mother and father in adolescent interaction and analyzing real-time dyadic emotions using pioneering state space grid analysis.
Furthermore, we consider that this study is an important contribution to the current literature that focuses on the real-time dynamic nature of emotions (Butler 2011; Houben et al.
2015; Van der Giessen et al., 2018). Specifically, dyadic emotional variability during parent- adolescent conflicts is essential for understanding anxiety problems.
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Annexe Informed consent of the study.
Consentiment informat
Títol de la investigació
Complejidad de la regulación emocional en adolescentes en riesgo de ansiedad: un análisis multimétodo y multinivel
Investigador principal
Dra. Maria Balle Cabot. Departament de Psicologia. Institut Universitari d’Investigació en Ciències de la Salut. Universitat de les Illes Balears.
Objectius i procediment
Mitjançant aquest projecte pretenem millorar la comprensió de la desregulació emocional en adolescents en risc de desenvolupar trastorns d’ansietat des de la Teoria dels Sistemes Dinàmics.
L’objectiu principal serà estudiar els mecanismes conductuals, socials i fisiològics (multinivell) implicats en la desregulació emocional en situacions estimulars diferents (multimètode), tant en laboratori com en condicions naturals. Per a això es duran a terme un estudi en condicions natural (III), en que es pretén obtenir informació sobre la flexibilitat i variabilitat de les estratègies de regulació emocional i la seva relació amb l’estat afectiu i la freqüència cardíaca. Creiem que una millor comprensió dels processos mitjançant els quals es relacionen la desregulació emocional i el
risc d’iniciar els trastorns d’ansietat suposaria una detecció primerenca, fins i tot abans de l’aparició de la psicopatologia, fet que possibilitaria la seva prevenció.
Beneficis potencials, riscos i inconvenients de l’estudi III (Condicions naturals)
Les dades obtingudes poden servir per detectar de forma primerenca i prevenir un dels trastorns més freqüents a la nostra societat: l’ansietat. Sabem que és a l’adolescència quan comencen, i també quan es poden intentar prevenir, la majoria d’aquests trastorns.
Els registres de la resposta cardíaca fa molts d’anys que s’utilitzen a molts de centres d’investigació de tot el món sense que s’hagin trobat riscos per a la salut de les persones. Aquests registres no provoquen cap tipus de molèstia.
L’obtenció de l’ús de les estratègies de regulació emocional i dels els estats afectius es realitzaria mitjançant notificacions a l’adolescent enviades a través d’una aplicació de telèfon mòbil. Els registres es duran a terme durant 3 períodes de 4 dies, des de dijous després de l’institut a fins dilluns per la nit, per a evitar interferències amb l’horari escolar.
La participació és voluntària i en qualsevol moment els participants i/o les seves famílies poden abandonar l’estudi. Es prendran totes les mesures necessàries per preservar l’anonimat (els
participants podran exercir els seus drets d'accés, de rectificació, de cancel·lació i d’oposició a les dades recollides davant la responsable de la investigació a les instal·lacions de l'IUNICS a la UIB, en el telèfon 971259517 o a través de l’adreça [email protected])
Confidencialitat de les dades
Els registres que l’identifiquen i el consentiment informat signat només seran coneguts per la responsable del projecte (Dra. Maria Balle Cabot) i el personal de la Universitat de les Illes Balears que treballa directament a l'estudi. En cap cas la vostra informació personal serà compartida amb
cap altra persona o grup. Per a l’anàlisi de dades us assignarem un codi secret per assegurar que la informació que ens proporcioneu sigui tractada de forma anònima, sense que pugui ser relacionada amb la vostra persona. Els resultats obtinguts a aquesta investigació es podran presentar, ocultant el nom de les persones que hi participen o altres indicis que poguessin desvetllar-lo, a reunions científiques, revistes científiques o emprats per a tasques docents.
Consentiment del participant
He llegit els continguts d’aquest consentiment informat, sé que en qualsevol moment podré abandonar l'estudi si així ho desitjo, i he pogut fer les preguntes que he trobat convenients. Entenc els objectius de la investigació i que les meves dades seran confidencials.
En compliment de la Llei 15/1999 de protecció de dades de caràcter personal, he estat informat que puc exercir els meus drets d'accés, de rectificació, de cancel·lació i d’oposició a les dades recollides davant la responsable de la investigació a les instal·lacions del IUNICS a la UIB, en el telèfon 971259517 o a través de l’adreça electrònica [email protected]
Accept participar a aquest estudi i en prova de conformitat signam aquest document, jo mateix/a i les persones legalment responsables de jo (pare, mare, tutor/a), les quals accepten que participem en aquest estudi en les condicions detallades.
Data:
Responsable legal 1:
DNI:
Signatura:
Responsable legal 2:
DNI:
Signatura:
Participant:
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