Temperamental emotionality in preschool-aged children and depressive disorders in parents: Associations in a large community sample.

Abstract

Researchers and clinicians have long hypothesized that there are temperamental vulnerabilities to depressive disorders. Despite the fact that individual differences in temperament should be evident in early childhood, most studies have focused on older youth and adults. We hypothesized that if early childhood temperament is a risk factor for depressive disorders, it should be associated with better-established risk markers, such parental depression. Hence, we examined the associations of laboratory-assessed positive emotionality (PE), negative emotionality (NE), and behavioral inhibition (BI) with semi-structured interview-based diagnoses of parental depressive disorders in a community sample of 536 three-year old children. Children with higher levels of NE and BI had higher probabilities of having a depressed parent. However, both main effects were qualified by interactions with child PE. At high and moderate, but not low, levels of child PE, greater NE and BI were associated with higher rates of parental depression. Conversely, at low, but not high and moderate, levels of child NE, low PE was associated with a higher rate of parental depression. Child temperament was not associated with parental anxiety and substance use disorders. These findings indicate that laboratory-assessed temperament in young children is associated with parental depressive disorders, however the relations are complex and it is important to consider interactions between temperament dimensions rather than focusing exclusively on main effects.

Integrating Etiological Models of Social Anxiety and Depression in Youth: Evidence for a Cumulative Interpersonal Risk Model

“…Thus, parental anxiety disorders are associated with elevating risk of children to have anxiety disorders, SAD, and MDD. However, Olino et al (2010) found parental MDD and not anxiety disorders was related to parents' reports of 2-yearolds' internalizing behaviors. Methodological and age differences could account for these different findings, as Olino et al had very young children who were assessed via parent-reported symptoms and not diagnostic interviews.…”

Combining Neural and Behavioral Indicators in the Assessment of Internalizing Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents

“…Thus, they provide an important link to neuroscience on the biological bases of fearful temperament in other animals. Existing research utilizing batteries of laboratory tasks (e.g., Durbin, 2010;Durbin, Klein, Hayden, Buckley, & Moerk, 2005;Hayden, Klein, Durbin, & Olino, 2006;Olino, Klein, Dyson, Rose, & Durbin, 2010) has covered a range of manifestations of traits related to fear/fearlessness and inhibitory control. Tasks used for assessing fear proneness include contact-with-stranger tasks, performance tasks involving presentation of negative feedback or in which concerns about social scrutiny are heightened, exposure to typically fear-eliciting stimuli (e.g., scary objects, animals) or ambiguous/novel stimuli, or instructed engagement in acts that tend to elicit physical caution (such as walking across a balance beam).…”

“…Lab measures of fear proneness in preschoolers have been linked to familial risk for internalizing disorders (e.g., Olino et al, 2010), child anxiety disorders (e.g., Dougherty et al, 2011), and genetic polymorphisms . Moreover, laboratory research on dispositional fear (e.g., Dyson, Olino, Durbin, Goldsmith, & Klein, 2012) indicates that this construct is differentiable from individual differences in other negative emotions.…”

“…Individual differences in responses within these tasks have been linked to teacher-and parentreported internalizing and externalizing problems (Dougherty et al, 2011;, and family history of mood disorders Olino et al, 2010). Other researchers have employed tasks focusing on motor slowing, inhibition of dominant behaviors, and patience in response to delays as indicators of effortful control (e.g., Kochanksa, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest, 1996), or measures from cognitive psychology designed to tap executive functioning skills (e.g., Diamond & Taylor, 1996;Hongwanishkul, Happaney, Lee, & Zelazo, 2005).…”

Nature and Structure of Temperament in Early and Middle Childhood: A Multi-Method Approach

“…The predictive validity of observational measures has been examined, with work establishing that such temperament indices show meaningful associations with children's psychophysiological systems (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols, & Ghera, 2005;Mackrell et al, 2014), moral development (Kochanska, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest, 1996), and quality of parent-child relationships (Kochanska, Aksan, & Carlson, 2005). Observed affective traits (i.e., positive and negative emotionality) in preschoolers have been linked to maternal mood disorders (Durbin, Klein, Hayden, Buckley, & Moerk, 2005;Olino, Klein, Dyson, Rose, & Durbin, 2010), EEG asymmetries (Shankman, Tenke, Bruder, Durbin, Hayden, & Klein, 2005), serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms (Hayden, Dougherty, Maloney, Durbin, Olino, & Nurnberger et al, 2007), and the development of depressotypic cognitions and emerging internalizing symptoms in middle childhood (Dougherty, Klein, Durbin, Hayden, & Olino, 2010;Hayden, Klein, Durbin, & Olino, 2006;. Overall, observational assessments of temperament have demonstrated meaningful associations with both normal and abnormal processes, indicating their utility for developmental psychopathology research (Durbin, 2010).…”