# Child temperament as a moderator of maternal emotion coaching:  Implications for pathways leading to behavior problems

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON · 2020 · $303,604

## Abstract

Emotion coaching (EC) is a parental emotion socialization style combining awareness and acceptance of
children’s emotional experience with active validation of and teaching about children’s emotions. EC is related
to lower externalizing and internalizing problems. Theory and research support the mediating role of emotion
regulation (ER) in links of EC with children’s psychosocial adjustment. Thus, a developmental cascade model
is proposed, with EC affecting children’s later ER, which then affects children’s internalizing and externalizing
behavior problems (BP). One study to date has longitudinally investigated developmental shifts in EC,
showing decreasing awareness and acceptance of children’s negative emotions and increasing endorsement
of coaching negative emotions from 5 to 9 years of age. The proposed study will add to the literature by
examining emotion coaching from 3 to 9 years of age, spanning the early childhood years when children make
strides in understanding publically observable aspects of emotion as well as the middle childhood transition
when children increase in understanding internal, mental aspects of emotions. Furthermore, the study will use
behavioral observations of EC of both positive and negative emotions during object-focused mother-child
interaction tasks, which provide naturally-occurring opportunities to capture mothers’ discouragement of
children’s emotions, an important element of the meta-emotion construct. Because there is evidence for
differential effects of EC according to child temperament, the proposed study will also examine whether
children’s temperament moderates links of EC with ER. In particular, children higher in negative affectivity
(NA) may have greater need of parental EC because of their frequent and intense experience of negative
emotions, and their need may also make them more receptive to parents’ efforts. Thus, the developmental
cascade model tested in the proposed study will be a moderated mediation model. Also, the model includes
the potential bidirectional influence of children’s BP on parents’ later EC. Specific aims are to examine (a)
individual rank-order stability and mean-level change in maternal EC from early to middle childhood, and cross-
task consistency in maternal EC in middle childhood, and (b) longitudinal associations of EC with BP through
the mediator of ER, with NA included as a moderator of this developmental cascade and bidirectional relations
of BP with later EC included. Aims will be accomplished through secondary analysis of data from a
longitudinal study of psychobiology, temperament, and cognitive development that includes time points when
children were 3, 4, 6 and 9 years of age. Videotaped mother-child interaction tasks will be re-purposed to
observe EC. The study already includes standard age-appropriate measures of NA (maternal report and
observed), ER (observed), and BP (maternal report) at each time point. The proposed research advances
developmental science by ri...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10237096
- **Project number:** 7R01HD097131-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Julie C Dunsmore
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $303,604
- **Award type:** 7
- **Project period:** 2019-03-01 → 2023-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10237096

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10237096, Child temperament as a moderator of maternal emotion coaching:  Implications for pathways leading to behavior problems (7R01HD097131-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10237096. Licensed CC0.

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