Department of Psychology, University of California, 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1563, USA.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2018 Apr;46(3):423-435. doi: 10.1007/s10802-017-0311-8.
Examining emotion reactivity and recovery following minor problems in daily life can deepen our understanding of how stress affects child mental health. This study assessed children's immediate and delayed emotion responses to daily problems at school, and examined their correlations with psychological symptoms. On 5 consecutive weekdays, 83 fifth graders (M = 10.91 years, SD = 0.53, 51% female) completed brief diary forms 5 times per day, providing repeated ratings of school problems and emotions. They also completed a one-time questionnaire about symptoms of depression, and parents and teachers rated child internalizing and externalizing problems. Using multilevel modeling techniques, we assessed within-person daily associations between school problems and negative and positive emotion at school and again at bedtime. On days when children experienced more school problems, they reported more negative emotion and less positive emotion at school, and at bedtime. There were reliable individual differences in emotion reactivity and recovery. Individual-level indices of emotion responses derived from multilevel models were correlated with child psychological symptoms. Children who showed more negative emotion reactivity reported more depressive symptoms. Multiple informants described fewer internalizing problems among children who showed better recovery by bedtime, even after controlling for children's average levels of exposure to school problems. Diary methods can extend our understanding of the links between daily stress, emotions and child mental health. Recovery following stressful events may be an important target of research and intervention for child internalizing problems.
考察日常生活中小问题后的情绪反应和恢复可以加深我们对压力如何影响儿童心理健康的理解。本研究评估了儿童对学校日常问题的即时和延迟情绪反应，并探讨了它们与心理症状的相关性。在连续 5 个工作日内，83 名五年级学生（M=10.91 岁，SD=0.53，51%为女性）每天完成 5 次简短的日记形式，对学校问题和情绪进行了重复评估。他们还完成了一份关于抑郁症状的一次性问卷，家长和教师则评估了儿童的内化和外化问题。本研究使用多层次建模技术，评估了个人内在的每日学校问题与学校和睡前的消极和积极情绪之间的关联。当儿童经历更多的学校问题时，他们在学校和睡前报告了更多的消极情绪和更少的积极情绪。情绪反应和恢复存在可靠的个体差异。从多层次模型中得出的情绪反应个体水平指标与儿童心理症状相关。表现出更多消极情绪反应的儿童报告更多的抑郁症状。即使在控制儿童平均暴露于学校问题的水平后，多来源描述显示，在睡前表现出更好恢复的儿童的内化问题更少。日记方法可以扩展我们对日常生活压力、情绪和儿童心理健康之间联系的理解。应激事件后的恢复可能是儿童内化问题研究和干预的一个重要目标。
