Ablow, JenniferMeaselle, Jeffrey,Elliot, Annaliese2022-07-122022-07-122022https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27296Previous research demonstrates how maternal psychopathology is associated with negative infant outcomes; however, there is minimal research on intergenerational transmission. Specifically, there is a lack of literature on intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation. Emotion dysregulation has been demonstrated as a precursor to future psychopathology in childhood and adulthood; therefore, infancy is a crucial time period to develop self-regulatory skills. This study aims to build upon previous research to further understand how maternal emotion dysregulation predicts poor infant regulation. This study examines the predictive association among maternal emotional dysregulation reported prenatally during the third trimester and postnatally at six months, using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), and observations of infant self-regulation postnatally (N = 221). Temperament, measured with the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire (IBQ-R), was controlled to capture the independent contributions of maternal dysregulation to infant’s early indices of emotion regulatory capacities. Infants’ self-regulation and negative affect was measured at 6 months postpartum with micro-analytic behavioral coding during the Still Face Paradigm (SFP), a widely used paradigm to examine early relationship patterns between caregivers and their infants. Although association between prenatal reports of maternal emotion regulation was not significantly related to infants’ emerging regulatory capacities, maternal reports of concurrent dysregulation at 6-months postpartum was associated with poorer self-regulation in their infants. This finding suggests that emotion dysregulation can be transmitted across generations by postpartum mother-child interaction influences.en-USCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Emotion regulationSelf-regulationIntergenerational transmissionDevelopmental psychologyThesis/Dissertation0000-0002-3293-0961