Understanding the Associations Between Parent-Child Coregulation Patterns and Child Self-Regulation
Open Access
- Author:
- Lobo, Frances
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- October 30, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Erika Sell Lunkenheimer, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Kristin Ann Buss, Committee Member
Pamela Marie Cole, Committee Member - Keywords:
- parent-child relationship
coregulation
contingency
synchrony
flexibility
self-regulation - Abstract:
- Biobehavioral coregulation is the process by which parents and their children regulate one another through their goal-oriented behavior, affect, and physiology, thought to support children’s burgeoning regulatory capacities. Recent findings suggest that particular coregulation patterns – dyadic affective flexibility and positive behavioral contingency - appear beneficial in early childhood and are associated with having fewer behavioral problems. However, it is not yet clear whether and how parent-child biobehavioral coregulation supports other aspects of self-regulation in the child. The present study used path analyses to examine whether these coregulation patterns predicted behavioral, emotional, and temperament-based components of preschoolers’ self-regulation. We also investigated the relative contributions of affective and behavioral coregulation patterns in predicting children’s individual regulatory capacities in light of each other. Our findings suggest that flexible parent-child affective exchanges, as long as the interaction content is primarily positive, support various aspects of children’s self-regulation in early childhood. On the other hand, flexible affective exchanges and predictable behavioral exchanges present as a risk factor for children’s regulatory abilities in the context of more negative interaction content. The present findings also point to the potential importance of investigating cross-domain relations between coregulatory patterns and children’s regulatory capacities, given that affective coregulation was associated with children’s behavioral self-regulation and behavioral coregulation was associated with children’s emotional self-regulation. Discussion centers on the importance of considering process, content, and domain in studies examining parent-child biobehavioral coregulation as a mechanism of child regulatory development.