Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA.
Infant Ment Health J. 2021 May;42(3):331-345. doi: 10.1002/imhj.21913. Epub 2021 Apr 3.
Many studies focus on proximal associations between parental sensitivity and emotional well-being in early childhood, with less data examining how parenting in infancy predicts children's emotional trajectories across childhood, in particular negative emotional symptoms of anxiety and depression. Thus, this study utilized data from The Family Life Project (N = 1015), a prospective study of child development in rural poverty, and assessed whether sensitive parenting in the first 4 years of life predicted child internalizing emotional symptoms (i.e., anxiety and depression) from kindergarten to fifth grade and whether early child executive functioning mediated this relationship. Path models indicated that observation of sensitive parenting predicted a decrease in teachers' report of child negative emotional symptoms over time and predicted fewer negative emotional symptoms in fifth grade. Moreover, though executive functioning performance did not mediate change in symptoms over time, executive functioning did mediate the relationship between sensitive parenting and fifth-grade symptoms, suggesting that executive functioning is one mechanism by which early sensitive parenting buffers long-term emotional development. Findings highlight the importance of early parenting and executive functioning in development of anxiety and depression symptoms and suggests potential targets for transdiagnostic intervention.
许多研究都集中在父母敏感性与儿童早期情感幸福感之间的近端关联上，而较少有数据研究婴儿期的育儿方式如何预测儿童整个童年时期的情感轨迹，特别是焦虑和抑郁等负面情绪症状。因此，本研究利用了《家庭生活项目》（N=1015）的数据，该项目是一项针对农村贫困地区儿童发展的前瞻性研究，评估了生命最初 4 年中敏感育儿方式是否能预测儿童从幼儿园到五年级的内化情绪症状（即焦虑和抑郁），以及早期儿童执行功能是否能调节这种关系。路径模型表明，观察到的敏感育儿方式预示着教师报告的儿童负面情绪症状随时间的推移而减少，并且预示着五年级时负面情绪症状较少。此外，尽管执行功能表现并不能调节症状随时间的变化，但执行功能确实调节了敏感育儿方式与五年级症状之间的关系，这表明执行功能是早期敏感育儿方式缓冲长期情感发展的一种机制。研究结果强调了早期育儿和执行功能在焦虑和抑郁症状发展中的重要性，并提出了潜在的跨诊断干预目标。
