Role of temperament in early adolescent pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems using a bifactor model: Moderation by parenting and gender

Abstract

We contribute to the literature on the relations of temperament to externalizing and internalizing problems by considering parental emotional expressivity and child gender as moderators of such relations and examining prediction of pure and co-occurring problem behaviors during early to middle adolescence using bifactor models (which provide unique and continuous factors for pure and co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems). Parents and teachers reported on children’s (4.5- to 8-year-olds; N = 214) and early adolescents’ (6 years later; N = 168) effortful control, impulsivity, anger, sadness, and problem behaviors. Parental emotional expressivity was measured observationally and with parents’ self-reports. Early-adolescents’ pure externalizing and co-occurring problems shared childhood and/or early-adolescent risk factors of low effortful control, high impulsivity, and high anger. Lower childhood and early-adolescent impulsivity and higher early-adolescent sadness predicted early-adolescents’ pure internalizing. Childhood positive parental emotional expressivity more consistently related to early-adolescents’ lower pure externalizing compared to co-occurring problems and pure internalizing. Lower effortful control predicted changes in externalizing (pure and co-occurring) over 6 years, but only when parental positive expressivity was low. Higher impulsivity predicted co-occurring problems only for boys. Findings highlight the probable complex developmental pathways to adolescent pure and co-occurring externalizing and internalizing problems.

Adapting to the changing needs of adolescents: parenting practices and challenges to sensitive attunement

“…Adolescents vary on a wide variety of dimensions that include temperament 40 , sensitivity to parenting 41 , biological vulnerabilities 42, 43 , psychopathology 44, 45 , personality 46 and relationship history 4748 . These individual differences between adolescents may moderate the association between parenting practices and adolescent outcomes and further refine the meaning of sensitive attunement to encompass the ways in which parents adapt their practices to the characteristics of a particular adolescent.…”

Parenting Practices and Adjustment Profiles among Latino Youth in Rural Areas of the United States

“…Further, some work indicates that positive parenting practices are more closely associated with some adjustment domains more than others. Specifically, parenting expressivity during childhood was more strongly associated with lower externalizing behaviors during adolescence than internalizing symptoms or the co-occurrence of externalizing and internalizing problems (Wang et al 2016). Similarly, parental monitoring was found to be associated with substance use in a sample of predominantly white adolescents only when internalizing symptoms were low (Villarreal and Nelson 2018).…”

“…Previous research has demonstrated the co-occurrence of internalizing symptoms, externalizing behaviors, and substance use (Chan et al 2008). Parenting practices, including culturally embedded parenting practices, have been linked to adolescent adjustment (Caughy et al 2011;Wang et al 2016). Further, parenting styles have been linked to positive youth adjustment and lower levels of maladjustment among adolescents (Bámaca-Colbert et al 2018;Carlo et al 2018;Pinquart 2017aPinquart , 2017b.…”

The Prevailing Mechanisms of Psychological Protection at Persons With Different Dominance of Temperament

“…Analysis of foreign and domestic literature has shown that currently relevant is the study of the factors that determine a person's temperament, the connection of temperament with the occurrence and development of diseases of the cardiovascular system, as well as the interdependence of temperament and human behavioral features. However, there is a need to expand ideas about the role of biologically determined properties of temperament in the personal design of protective behavior, about the role and place of psychological protection in the overall structure of individuality (Abdoli Dehnavi, et al 2016;Wang, et al 2016).…”

“…In general, we can state the lack of integration of theoretical and empirical data into a single concept. Therefore, the problem of personality defense mechanisms with different dominance of the type of temperament can be considered as one of the most urgent in the psychology of personality, based on real practical inquiry (Wang, et al 2016;Di Giuseppe, et al 2019).…”