Studies have shown that improved parenting mediates treatment outcomes for aggressive children, but we lack fine-grained descriptions of how parent-child interactions change with treatment. The current study addresses this gap by applying new dynamic systems methods to study parent-child emotional behavior patterns. These methods tap moment-to-moment changes in interaction processes within and across sessions and quantify previously unmeasured processes of change related to treatment success. Aggressive children and their parents were recruited from combined Parent Management Training and Cognitive-behavioral programs in "real world" clinical settings. Behavioral outcomes were assessed by reports from parents and clinicians. At pre- and post-treatment, home visits were videotaped while parents and children discussed consecutively: a positive topic, a mutually unresolved problem, and another positive topic. Results showed that significant improvements in children's externalizing behavior were associated with increases in parent-child emotional flexibility during the problem-solving discussion. Also, dyads who improved still expressed negative emotions, but they acquired the skills to repair conflicts, shifting out of their negative interactions to mutually positive patterns.

Early self-regulation predicts school readiness, academic success, and quality of life in adulthood. Its development in the preschool years is rapid and also malleable. Thus, preschool curricula that promote the development of self-regulation may help set children on a more positive developmental trajectory. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial of the Tools of the Mind preschool curriculum, a program that targets self-regulation through imaginative play and self-regulatory language (Tools; clinical trials identifier NCT02462733). Previous research with Tools is limited, with mixed evidence of its effectiveness. Moreover, it is unclear whether it would benefit all preschoolers or primarily those with poorly developed cognitive capacities (e.g., language, executive function, attention). The study goals were to ascertain whether the Tools program leads to greater gains in self-regulation compared to Playing to Learn (YMCA PTL), another play based program that does not target self-regulation specifically, and whether the effects were moderated by children’s initial language and hyperactivity/inattention. Two hundred and sixty 3- to 4-year-olds attending 20 largely urban daycares were randomly assigned, at the site level, to receive either Tools or YMCA PTL (the business-as-usual curriculum) for 15 months. We assessed self-regulation at pre-, mid and post intervention, using two executive function tasks, and two questionnaires regarding behavior at home and at school, to capture development in cognitive as well as socio-emotional aspects of self-regulation. Fidelity data showed that only the teachers at the Tools sites implemented Tools, and did so with reasonable success. We found that children who received Tools made greater gains on a behavioral measure of executive function than their YMCA PTL peers, but the difference was significant only for those children whose parents rated them high in hyperactivity/inattention initially. The effect of Tools did not vary with children’s initial language skills. We suggest that, as both programs promote quality play and that the two groups fared similarly well overall, Tools and YMCA PTL may be effective curricula choices for a diverse preschool classroom. However, Tools may be advantageous in classrooms with children experiencing greater challenges with self-regulation, at no apparent cost to those less challenged in this regard.

Emotion socialization by close relationship partners plays a role in adolescent depression. In the current study, a microsocial approach was used to examine how adolescents' emotions are socialized by their mothers and close friends in real time, and how these interpersonal emotion dynamics are related to adolescent depressive symptoms. Participants were 83 adolescents aged 16 to 17 years who participated in conflict discussions with their mothers and self-nominated close friends. Adolescents' positive and negative emotions, and mothers' and peers' supportive regulation of adolescent emotions, were coded in real time. Two multilevel survival analyses in a 2-level Cox hazard regression framework predicted the hazard rate of (1) mothers' supportive regulation of adolescents' emotions, and (2) peers' supportive regulation of adolescents' emotions. The likelihood of maternal supportiveness, regardless of adolescent emotions, was lower for adolescents with higher depressive symptoms. In addition, peers were less likely to up-regulate adolescent positive emotions at higher levels of adolescent depressive symptoms. The results of the current study support interpersonal models of depression and demonstrate the importance of real-time interpersonal emotion processes in adolescent depressive symptoms.