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Parenting / Families

Parent-Child Interpersonal Dynamics of Vocally Coded Emotional Arousal in Families Presenting for Behavioral Parent Training

(PS8-A11) Parent-child Interpersonal Dynamics of Vocally Coded Emotional Arousal in Families Presenting for Behavioral Parent Training

Saturday, November 18, 2023
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PST
Location: Regency Ballroom, Level 7


Objective: Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) is the gold standard treatment for early-onset behavior disorders (BDs), however, not all families benefit. Emotion regulation (ER) is one potential mechanism underlying BPT outcomes, yet past findings are mixed and focus on intrapersonal ER. The aims of this study were (a) to characterize the interpersonal dynamics of how vocally encoded emotional arousal unfolds during parent-child interactions and how parents and children influence each other’s emotional responses, and (b) to examine the links between these interpersonal emotion dynamics, child behavior, parenting, and BPT outcome.



Method: Families of children with early-onset BDs (N = 45) completed two interaction tasks designed to evoke different interaction patterns (parent asking the child to do something versus to refrain from doing something) and measures of parenting and child behavior at baseline and post-BPT. Emotional arousal was measured every 0.25 seconds using vocal fundamental frequency (f0) and interpersonal dynamics were modeled using repeated-measure actor-partner interdependence models (APIMs) and coupled linear oscillator models (CLOs).



Results: When considering relative levels of f0 from one talk turn to the next (APIMs), parents and children showed intrapersonal regulation around their respective baseline levels and synchronizing reactivity to each other’s f0, which provides opportunity for adaptive coregulation as well as harbors risk for mutual escalation. When considering the shape of oscillations (CLOs), only children showed coupled effects, suggesting that parents exert more pervasive influence on child ER than vice versa. At the intrapersonal level, regulation of f0 was slowed for parents with more maladaptive parenting and children with more behavior problems. Interpersonal reactivity was not associated with behavior problems, parenting, or BPT outcome.



Conclusions: This first characterization of the interpersonal dynamics of f0 in families presenting for BPT provides insights into the challenges families face while navigating difficult interactions and provides an avenue for further research on interpersonal emotion dynamics. For example, the manner in which a well-regulated parent is communicating their emotional arousal via their voice might modulate their child's regulation; at the same time, if a parent is poorly regulated themselves, these findings would also suggest that this might influence child ER negatively as well. Thus, parental emotion dysregulation may spillover into child dysregulation during interactions in part due to how they respond to each other's vocally encoded emotional arousal.