Early caregiving adversities and parental context effects on adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation

Emotion differentiation—the ability to identify specific experienced emotions—associates with psychological health. Although theorized to develop through caregiving experiences, contextual effects on emotion differentiation in developmental populations have rarely been investigated, particularly among youth who have experienced disruptions in early caregiving. Here, we examined how adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation varies across socioemotional contexts and whether these patterns differ following exposure to severe caregiving-related early adversities. Adolescents aged 10–17 with or without caregiving-related early adversities (N=81; mean age=13.49, SD = 1.97; 53% male/47% female, 9%-Asian American, 28%-black, 34%-white, 28%-other) completed 7-day ecological momentary assessment (4–5 surveys/day), reporting emotions and social contexts. At the trait level, there were no significant group differences in emotion differentiation. At the momentary level, negative momentary emotion differentiation decreased following negative parent-related contexts compared to other contexts. However, the momentary emotions’ standard deviation indicated also differentiated phasic intensification of a few negative emotions. Importantly, exposure to caregiving-related early adversities attenuated these contextual effects, L.Ratio(3) = 9.178 - 11.263. These findings provide initial evidence linking severe caregiving-related early adversities to affective dynamic processes and raise the hypothesis that early caregiving disruptions mitigate momentary parental modulation effects on emotion differentiation.