Browsing by Author "Zhang, Jingchen"
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Item Less is More: Emotion Regulation Deficits in Military Fathers Magnify their Benefit from a Parenting Program(2018-05) Zhang, JingchenCombat deployment and exposure to traumatic events may cause deficits in emotion regulation, thus impairing military parents’ capacities to respond effectively to children’s emotions. This is a particularly salient issue for fathers – who comprise the majority of service members – following deployment to war. Evidence-based parenting programs have been developed to improve parenting practices in military families, however, little is known about the role of parents’ emotion regulation on the effectiveness of the parenting program. Using data from a randomized controlled trial, this study examines the effects of the After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) program, on observed emotion socialization related parenting behaviors (ESRBs), and whether self-reported emotion regulation of service member fathers affects program outcomes. This study used a subset of data from the ADAPT study, which included 181 fathers (M age = 37.76, SD = 6.42) in 2parent families who had been deployed to recent conflicts and who had at least one 4-12-year-old child living in the home. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the intent-to-treat effect of the ADAPT program on observed effective parenting 1 year post-baseline, the moderating effect of self-reported emotion dysregulation at baseline, and the mediating role of emotion dysregulation at baseline at 1-year post-baseline. Results showed that the intervention did not directly improve fathers’ observed ESRBs relative to the control group. However, the intervention did significantly reduce observed reactivity/coercion and distress avoidance among fathers with .5 SD above average self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation at baseline. Moreover, fathers’ emotion regulation difficulties at 1 year were found to mediate the intervention effect on observed reactivity/coercion, which was strengthened by higher levels of baseline emotion regulation difficulties. Implications for personalized parenting interventions are described.Item Parenting Gets Under the Skin: Mother-Child Physiological Synchrony and Child Self-Regulation in Post-Deployed Military Families(2021-05) Zhang, JingchenParent-child physiological synchrony, which is characterized by the matching or concordance of physiological states among parents and children, has been theorized to be linked to children’s self-regulation and adaptive outcomes. However, the link between physiological synchrony and child regulatory outcomes was rarely examined in empirical studies, especially in the at-risk populations (i.e., post-deployed military families). Also, no research has investigated the impact of parenting interventions on physiological synchrony. Study 1 employed a multilevel growth modeling approach to model dynamic changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during a dyadic problem-solving task, and results showed a positive association between physiological synchrony and child self-regulation. Also, younger children tended to show positive lagged synchrony with mothers while older children tended to show negative lagged synchrony. Mothers’ emotion dysregulation was found to be associated with higher levels of lagged synchrony. Additionally, synchrony was found to be linked to both positive (i.e., fewer displays of anger/disgust, more positive physical behaviors, and less negative directive behaviors) and negative parenting behaviors (i.e., fewer displays of positive affect). Study 2 explored the effect of the After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT parenting intervention on dyadic synchrony, as well as the moderation effect of synchrony at baseline on the indirect intervention effect on child self-regulation through changes in parental emotion socialization. Although the hypothesized intervention effect was not observed, dyads with negative synchrony at baseline were found to benefit more from the ADAPT intervention. The changes in emotion socialization behaviors were further associated with better child self-regulation. These two studies highlighted the importance of parent-child physiological synchrony in self-regulation development in children in military families who are at risk for developing maladaptive behaviors. The implications and future directions are discussed.