Priya Kanajam

Emotion regulation is critically linked to how well children develop socially, cognitively, and biologically and involves an interplay of multiple body systems with the caregiving environment. Children who do not have proper emotion regulation are often at greater risk for negative psychological and behavioral outcomes and fewer prosocial interactions. In the current study, emotion regulation abilities were compared between post-institutionalized (PI; N=124) and non-adopted (NA; N=176) children and adolescents between the ages of 7-15 years and physiological measures of salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) were compared to parenting measures. We coded anxiety and engagement measures and assessed sAA levels during a 5-minute speech portion of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-C). Parents were given the Maternal Emotion Styles Questionnaire (MESQ) to measure maternal emotional support. Results indicated that sAA reactivity was not significantly correlated with emotion regulation for both PI and NA children. In addition, a marginal association was found in that higher levels of emotional coaching from parents as well as greater sAA reactivity were correlated with less anxiety and higher engagement. Results suggest that greater parental emotion coaching may buffer physiological stress responses, which can be crucial to understanding how parenting affects high-risk children.