Association Between Maternal Emotion Socialization and Emotion Regulation in Early Adolescents with Elevated Internalizing Symptoms: Insights from Multiple-Informant Discrepancies

Junxuan Zhao ¹ Elena Pozzi ^2,3 Sylvia Chu Lin ^2,3 Christiane E Kehoe ⁴ Sophie Seychelle Havighurst ⁴ Sarah Whittle ^2,3*

• ¹ Department of Psychiatry, Royal Melbourne Hospital, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
• ² Orygen Youth Health, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
• ³ Centre for Youth Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
• ⁴ Mindful, Centre for Training and Research in Developmental Health,The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Although the relationship between parental emotion socialization and emotional competence, including emotion regulation, in children and adolescents has been extensively explored, there is a lack of research investigating this association in adolescents at high risk for mental health problems. The present study examined the association between maternal emotion socialization and emotion regulation in adolescents with high levels of internalizing symptoms, using multi-informant measurements (mother-reported, adolescent-reported, observer-reported). Mother-and adolescentreported data were assessed via questionnaires, while observer reports were based on coding from parent-adolescent interaction tasks. The study also explored whether discrepancies in the report of parent emotion socialization by different informants were related to adolescent emotion regulation, in addition to factors that may contribute to informant discrepancies. Participants were 70 female adolescents (mean age = 11.46 years, SD = 0.77) with high levels of internalizing symptoms and their mothers. Maternal emotion socialization (i.e., emotion dismissing and emotion coaching) was assessed using mother-and adolescent-reported questionnaires, and via observation during an emotion discussion task. Adolescent emotion regulation was reported by mothers and adolescents, while maternal emotion regulation was self-reported. Findings showed that adolescent-reported maternal emotion coaching and dismissing were significantly related to adolescent-reported adolescent emotion regulation. Informant discrepancies were not related to adolescent emotion regulation. Mothers higher in emotion regulation difficulties reported that their emotion coaching was more congruent with adolescent-and observer-reported emotion coaching, although this effect did not reach statistical significance. Our findings highlight the value of adolescent-reported variables in parenting and adolescent emotion research. Additionally, mothers' emotion regulation may influence their assessments of their emotion socialization behaviors.