Maternal Accuracy and Behavior in Anticipating Children's Responses to Novelty: Relations to Fearful Temperament and Implications for Anxiety Development

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that mothers' behaviors may serve as a mechanism in the development from toddler fearful temperament to childhood anxiety. The current study examined the maternal characteristic of accuracy in predicting toddlers' distress reactions to novelty in relation to temperament, parenting, and anxiety development. Ninety-three two-year-old toddlers and their mothers participated in the study. Maternal accuracy moderated the relation between fearful temperament and protective behavior, suggesting this bidirectional link may be more likely to occur when mothers are particularly attuned to their children's fear responses. An exploratory moderated mediation analysis supported the mechanistic role of protective parenting in the relation between early fearful temperament and later anxiety. Mediation only occurred, however, when mothers displayed high accuracy. Results are discussed within the broader literature of parental influence on fearful children's development.Keywords parent-child relations; parents/parenting; temperament; toddlers; anxiety Children's early fearful temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition; Kagan, Reznick, Clarke, Snidman, & Garcia-Coll, 1984) has been consistently linked to the development of anxiety and related problems (Biederman, Hirshfield-Becker, Rosenbaum, Herot, & Friedman, 2001;Schwartz, Snidman, & Kagan, 1999). Recent research has suggested that fearful temperament may elicit anxiogenic parenting (e.g., overprotection, intrusiveness), which then serves as a mechanism for future anxiety development. Anxiety prevention and intervention efforts would therefore benefit from better identifying mother-child dyads prone to this harmful mutual influence. Available evidence suggests that mothers' perceptions of their children's temperament predict parenting behaviors (Rubin, Nelson, Hastings, & Asendorpf, 1999) and strengthen the relation between temperament and parenting (Ghera, Hane, Malesa, & Fox, 2006). Relatively little is known, however, about the accuracy of mothers' perceptions and how individual differences in this accuracy affect the link between fearful temperament and parent behaviors. We previously investigated this maternal characteristic of accuracy in anticipating children's reactions to a variety of situations (Kiel & Buss, 2006 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript study focuses on maternal accuracy for novel situations, examining its effect on the association between fearful temperament and both protective and intrusive parenting behaviors. The current study also examined an exploratory model in which accuracy affects how maternal behavior mediates the development from fearful temperament to anxiety. Parenting Behaviors Linked to Fearful Temperament and AnxietyParenting behaviors have been linked to both adaptive and maladaptive child development. Of particular relevance to the development of anxiety are parents' interactions with their children during fear-provoking or potentially threatening situations. Ka...

A longitudinal investigation of predictors of the association between age 3 and age 6 behavioural inhibition

“…First, we tested whether the association between age 3 and age 6 BI was influenced by PE; like BI, PE plays a prominent role in children’s exploratory behavior and reactions to novelty, and may therefore shape how children’s early inhibition unfolds over time. We also examined whether overprotective parenting contributes to the association between children’s BI assessed longitudinally in early childhood, building on the extant literature on early caregiving and the stability of BI, as well as research implicating overprotection in the relationship between BI and subsequent anxiety (e.g., Kiel & Buss, 2010). Although investigators have tested mediation models linking overprotection to the stability of BI (Kiel & Buss, 2012), to our knowledge, no one has previously examined whether parental overprotection moderates associations between children’s BI over time.…”

“…This gap in the BI literature is surprising given research implicating parental overprotection and related parenting behaviours in childhood anxiety (e.g., Kiel & Buss, 2010). Indeed, moderation effects have been reported in the child anxiety literature, finding interactions between child BI and parental overprotection when predicting child anxiety (e.g., Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010; Murray, Creswell, & Cooper, 2009).…”

“…Despite research examining related parenting constructs and child outcomes, no studies have looked specifically at whether the relationship between children’s BI across time is moderated specifically by parental overprotection, typically defined as parenting behaviours that eliminate, or shelter children from, stress, as well as parents’ excessively comforting and affectionate reactions when their children exhibit fear (e.g., Hutt, Buss, & Kiel, 2013; Kiel & Buss, 2010). Past research in preschoolers has focused on the role of overprotection as a mediator of links between fearful temperament and shyness/inhibition (Kiel & Buss, 2012).…”

Maternal Depressive Symptoms, Maternal Behavior, and Toddler Internalizing Outcomes: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…Some previous research posits that depressed mothers tend to perceive their children more negatively [e.g., 44]. However, maternal perceptions have important implications for maternal behavior and the quality of mother-child interactions [45], so utilizing maternal perceptions of toddler temperament and internalizing behavior may be just as important as using objective measures of these constructs. Nonetheless, future research could investigate the current model using observational measures of toddler temperament and behavior.…”

Emotion Socialization in Anxious Youth: Parenting Buffers Emotional Reactivity to Peer Negative Events

“…A number of studies have used observational methods to examine how parenting behaviors may regulate child emotional reactivity during emotion-eliciting or threatening events among samples of infants and young children, such as during immunizations, exposure to novelty, or after caregiver withdrawal during the still-face paradigm (Contradt & Ablow 2010; Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2004; Kiel & Buss, 2010; Moore & Calkins, 2004; Spinrad, Stifter, Donelan, McCall, & Turner, 2004). These studies have typically focused on positive parenting behaviors, and have shown that low levels of maternal sensitivity, support, or soothing to child distress signals is associated with greater child behavioral and physiological reactivity.…”