Wang Hui, Yan Jia Julia, Curtis Shailey, Zhao Peiyuan, Ma Xinru, Han Zhuo Rachel, Hu Xiaoyi
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai, Zhuhai, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, National Virtual Simulation Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Dec 9. doi: 10.1007/s10803-024-06674-y.
Parents of children with autism often experience a wide range of emotions in their daily lives. However, previous research has primarily focused on average levels of emotional challenges, neglecting the significance of daily emotion dynamics that may underlie parental psychological functioning. This study adopted a dynamic network approach to examine the strength of temporal connections within and between various emotions-referred to as emotion network density-and further explore its impacts on parental psychological distress. Participants included 76 Chinese parents (M = 36.36 years, SD = 3.95 years; 58 mothers) of children with autism. Parents reported their psychological distress at baseline and then completed measures of daily emotions over a 14-day period. The densities of overall, positive, and negative emotion networks were estimated using the Multilevel Vector Auto-Regression model. The results indicated that higher densities of the overall and negative emotion networks were associated with increased stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in parents. Further analysis of network components showed that the in-strength of fear and guilt (i.e., their likelihood of being affected by other emotions) and the out-strength of anger and guilt (i.e., their capacity to influence other emotions) were positively related to parental psychological distress. However, neither the overall density of the positive emotion network nor its specific components showed a significant relationship with parental psychological distress. These findings highlight the importance of considering the daily dynamics of emotions, particularly negative emotions, from a network perspective to better understand the development of psychological distress in parents of children with autism.
自闭症儿童的家长在日常生活中常常会经历各种各样的情绪。然而，以往的研究主要集中在情绪挑战的平均水平上，而忽视了可能构成父母心理功能基础的日常情绪动态的重要性。本研究采用动态网络方法来检验各种情绪内部和之间的时间联系强度（即情绪网络密度），并进一步探讨其对父母心理困扰的影响。参与者包括76名中国自闭症儿童的家长（平均年龄M = 36.36岁，标准差SD = 3.95岁；58名母亲）。家长们在基线时报告了他们的心理困扰，然后在14天的时间里完成了日常情绪测量。使用多水平向量自回归模型估计了总体、积极和消极情绪网络的密度。结果表明，总体和消极情绪网络的较高密度与家长的压力、焦虑和抑郁症状增加有关。对网络成分的进一步分析表明，恐惧和内疚的内向强度（即它们受其他情绪影响的可能性）以及愤怒和内疚的外向强度（即它们影响其他情绪的能力）与家长的心理困扰呈正相关。然而，积极情绪网络的总体密度及其特定成分均与家长的心理困扰没有显著关系。这些发现凸显了从网络角度考虑日常情绪动态，尤其是消极情绪动态对于更好地理解自闭症儿童家长心理困扰发展的重要性。
