Results of the current study provide preliminary evidence that seeking and receiving negative feedback via social networking sites can increase risk for disordered eating attitudes, and suggest that reducing maladaptive social networking usage may be an important target for prevention and intervention efforts aimed at reducing disordered eating attitudes.

Maternal depression has negative implications for parenting and child outcomes, but it is also important to understand the daily transactional interactions that occur between mothers varying in symptoms of depression and their children. The current study aimed to examine immediate bidirectional effects between maternal warmth and positive affect and toddler affect in a sample of mothers varying in symptoms of depression. Ninety-one mothers and their 24-month-old toddlers completed a laboratory free-play/clean-up task. Mothers rated their symptoms of depression using the CES-D, and maternal warmth and positive affect and toddler positive and negative affect were observationally coded from a free-play and clean-up laboratory task. Sequential analyses indicated that mothers with no or mild symptoms of depression exhibited mutual positive affect with their children, but mothers with more severe symptoms of depression did not. Mothers with higher symptoms of depression displayed a decrease in warmth concurrent with toddlers’ positive affect. Further, unlike dyads in which mothers had higher symptoms of depression, dyads of mothers with lower symptoms appeared to exhibit some covariation in positive affect across the episode. These results provide evidence that even in non-clinical samples, affective manifestations of mothers’ subthreshold levels of depression may have negative immediate effects on toddlers’ emotions, and that mothers without symptoms of depression may have more reciprocal affective exchanges with their toddlers.

Maternal depression relates to child internalizing outcomes, but one missing aspect of this association is how variation in depressive symptoms, including mild and moderate symptoms, relates to young children’s outcomes. The current study examined a moderated mediation model to investigate how maternal behaviors may mediate this association in the context of child temperament and gender. Mothers and toddlers completed a free-play/clean-up task in the laboratory. Mothers rated their depressive symptoms and their toddlers’ temperament and internalizing behaviors. Results indicated a significant indirect of maternal warmth on the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and toddler internalizing outcomes for boys with low negative emotionality. Toddler gender and temperament moderated the relation between maternal intrusiveness and toddler internalizing outcomes, but mediation was not supported. Results highlight the important interaction between child and maternal variables in predicting child outcomes, and suggest mechanisms by and conditions under which mild maternal depressive symptomatology can be a risk factor for toddler internalizing outcomes.

Childhood sleep problems are prevalent and relate to a wide range of negative psychological outcomes. However, it remains unclear how biological processes, such as HPA activity, may predict sleep problems over time in childhood in the context of certain parenting environments. Fifty-one mothers and their 18–20 month-old toddlers participated in a short-term longitudinal study assessing how shared variance among morning levels, diurnal change, and nocturnal change in toddlers’ cortisol secretion predicted change in sleep problems in the context of maternal overprotection and critical control. A composite characterized by low variability in, and, to a lesser extent, high morning values of cortisol, predicted increasing sleep problems from age 2 to age 3 when mothers reported high critical control. Results suggest value in assessing shared variance among different indices of cortisol secretion patterns and the interaction between cortisol and the environment in predicting sleep problems in early childhood.

Emotion and temperament researchers have faced an enduring issue of how to best measure children’s tendencies to express specific emotions. Inconsistencies between laboratory observation and parental report have made it challenging for researchers to determine the utility of these different forms of measurement. The current study examined the effect of laboratory episode characteristics (i.e., threat-level of the episode, maternal involvement) on concordance between maternal report and laboratory observation of toddler fear. The sample included 111 mother-toddler dyads who participated in a laboratory assessment when toddlers were approximately 24-months-old. Toddler fear was assessed both via maternal report and observation from a number of laboratory episodes that varied in their level of threat and whether mothers were free or constrained in their involvement in the task. Results indicated that maternal report related to the observed fear composites for low-threat, but not high-threat episodes. On the other hand, maternal involvement in the laboratory episodes did not moderate the relation between maternal report and laboratory observation of fear. These results suggest that the threat-level of laboratory episodes designed to elicit fear, but not maternal involvement in these episodes, may be important to take into consideration when assessing their relation to maternal report of fear and fearful temperament.