Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions
An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify, and describe one’s feelings. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent-child relationship. Yet, the mechanisms by which pare...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2014-07-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00558/full |
| _version_ | 1818467010021949440 |
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| author | Eva H Telzer Yang eQu Diane eGoldenberg Andrew J Fuligni Adriana eGalván Matthew D Lieberman |
| author_facet | Eva H Telzer Yang eQu Diane eGoldenberg Andrew J Fuligni Adriana eGalván Matthew D Lieberman |
| author_sort | Eva H Telzer |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify, and describe one’s feelings. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent-child relationship. Yet, the mechanisms by which parents transmit emotional competence to their children are difficult to measure because they are often implicit, idiosyncratic, and not easily articulated by parents or children. In the current study, we used a multifaceted approach that went beyond self-report measures and examined whether parental neural sensitivity to emotions predicted their child’s emotional competence. Twenty-two adolescent-parent dyads completed an fMRI scan during which they labeled the emotional expressions of negatively valenced faces. Results indicate that parents who recruited the amygdala, VLPFC, and brain regions involved in mentalizing (i.e., inferring others’ emotional states) had adolescent children with greater emotional competence. These results held after controlling for parents’ self-reports of emotional expressivity and adolescents’ self-reports of the warmth and support of their parent relationships. In addition, adolescents recruited neural regions involved in mentalizing during affect labeling, which significantly mediated the associated between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents’ emotional competence, suggesting that youth are modeling or referencing their parents’ emotional profiles, thereby contributing to better emotional competence. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T21:03:59Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a9f28cbbea8d44e1977d94b3e6f52b0f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1662-5161 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T21:03:59Z |
| publishDate | 2014-07-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-a9f28cbbea8d44e1977d94b3e6f52b0f2022-12-22T02:30:04ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Human Neuroscience1662-51612014-07-01810.3389/fnhum.2014.0055897651Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotionsEva H Telzer0Yang eQu1Diane eGoldenberg2Andrew J Fuligni3Adriana eGalván4Matthew D Lieberman5University of Illinois, Urbana ChampaignUniversity of Illinois, Urbana ChampaignUniversity of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesUniversity of California, Los AngelesAn essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify, and describe one’s feelings. Such emotional competence is thought to arise through the parent-child relationship. Yet, the mechanisms by which parents transmit emotional competence to their children are difficult to measure because they are often implicit, idiosyncratic, and not easily articulated by parents or children. In the current study, we used a multifaceted approach that went beyond self-report measures and examined whether parental neural sensitivity to emotions predicted their child’s emotional competence. Twenty-two adolescent-parent dyads completed an fMRI scan during which they labeled the emotional expressions of negatively valenced faces. Results indicate that parents who recruited the amygdala, VLPFC, and brain regions involved in mentalizing (i.e., inferring others’ emotional states) had adolescent children with greater emotional competence. These results held after controlling for parents’ self-reports of emotional expressivity and adolescents’ self-reports of the warmth and support of their parent relationships. In addition, adolescents recruited neural regions involved in mentalizing during affect labeling, which significantly mediated the associated between parental neural sensitivity and adolescents’ emotional competence, suggesting that youth are modeling or referencing their parents’ emotional profiles, thereby contributing to better emotional competence.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00558/fullEmotionsFamilyadolescencefMRIemotional competence |
| spellingShingle | Eva H Telzer Yang eQu Diane eGoldenberg Andrew J Fuligni Adriana eGalván Matthew D Lieberman Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Emotions Family adolescence fMRI emotional competence |
| title | Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions |
| title_full | Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions |
| title_fullStr | Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions |
| title_short | Adolescents’ emotional competence is associated with parents’ neural sensitivity to emotions |
| title_sort | adolescents emotional competence is associated with parents neural sensitivity to emotions |
| topic | Emotions Family adolescence fMRI emotional competence |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00558/full |
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