The predictive ability of parental support and child neurochemical architecture on emotion behaviour in girls aged 10-11.

Middle childhood brings rapid, overlapping developmental changes when emotion behaviours are taking shape. Understanding how biological, familial, and social factors influence emotional ability in children can help scaffold support systems to build adaptive responses. Using multimodal assessments including brain imaging, emotion behaviour vignettes, and self-report questionnaires, we recruited 49 girls (M = 10.5 years, SD = 5 months) and their primary caregiver to investigate emotion behaviour in a one-year follow up study. Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and morphological assessments of preselected brain regions associated with emotion behaviour, we found regional differences in neurochemical architecture, but our brain imaging data do not predict overt expressions of emotion behaviour in the girls. However, we found parents’ emotion behaviours and assessments of the girls’ emotions predicted emotion behaviour. Specifically, parents adapted their emotional socialisation processes for high socially anxious girls, and girls’ anxiety and depression levels were positively influenced by parents’ perceptions of their children’s emotion abilities and beliefs about the value of children’s emotion expression. This study highlights several ways in which parents are influential on children’s emotion behaviour and illustrates what brain imaging parameters may not be useful in understanding emotion development.