Identifying Causal Mechanisms in an Emotion-Based Preventive Intervention

描述（由申请人提供）：基于情绪的预防计划（EBP），现在包含一个家长情绪课程以及一个幼儿课程，旨在增加情绪知识（对情绪的表达，感觉状态和功能的理解），情绪调节能力和情绪动机的适应性使用。导致EBP发展的研究表明，情绪知识和情绪调节始终与儿童适应行为的增加和适应不良行为的减少有关。对EBP的初步研究表明，它促进了情绪知识的发展。这也为情绪知识促进情绪调节的发展提供了初步证据。反过来，情绪能力，定义在两个方面的情绪知识和情绪调节，促进社会能力的发展和减少的流行破坏性，攻击性和内化行为在经济困难的儿童。我们之前的研究也表明，父母参与EBP活动的数量有助于其对孩子的有益影响，并激发了EBP中添加情感课程的灵感。我们将随机分为一个EBP治疗和一个比较治疗（我能解决问题）的开端中心。本研究的目的是：（1）加强和扩展EBP作为一种预防性干预措施对市中心学前儿童的有效性的现有研究结果;（2）更彻底地研究情绪知识作为情绪调节发展中的因果机制的作用;（3）进一步评估情绪能力（定义为情绪知识和情绪调节）在适应性社会行为发展中的作用;（4）评估儿童气质因素、母亲情绪能力、母亲抑郁症状水平和环境风险因素（单亲状况、搬家次数和伴侣更换次数）作为儿童情绪能力和社会行为发展的因果因素的作用。公共卫生相关性：因为我们以前的纵向研究表明，情绪知识是一个重要的预测学术能力（衡量教师评级和儿童评估），我们希望EBP提高儿童的表现，在学校，以及他们的情绪和社会适应。改善家长和儿童的情绪能力和社会功能，预计将对身心健康的行为方面产生有益的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The emotion-based prevention program (EBP), which now contains an Emotions Course for Parents as well as one for young children, is designed to increase emotion knowledge (understanding of the expressions, feeling states, and functions of emotions), emotion regulatory ability, and the adaptive use of emotion motivation. The research that led to the development of EBP showed that emotion knowledge and emotion regulation consistently related to increases in children's adaptive behavior and decreases in maladaptive behavior. The preliminary research on EBP showed that it accelerated the development of emotion knowledge. It also provided tentative evidence that emotion knowledge facilitated the development of emotion regulation. In turn, emotion competence, defined in terms of both emotion knowledge and emotion regulation, facilitated the development of social competence and a decrease in the prevalence of disruptive, aggressive, and internalizing behavior in economically disadvantaged children. Our previous research also showed that the amount of parents' participation in EBP activities contributed to its beneficial effects on their children and inspired the addition of the Emotions Course Parent to EBP. We will randomly divide Head Start Centers for an EBP-treatment and a comparison-treatment (I Can Problem Solve). The proposed research is designed to (1) strengthen and extend the existing findings on the effectiveness of EBP as a preventive intervention for inner-city Head Start children; (2) examine more thoroughly the role of emotion knowledge as a causal mechanism in the development of emotion regulation; (3) further evaluate the role of emotion competence, defined in terms of emotion knowledge and emotion regulation, as a causal factor in the development of adaptive social behavior; and (4) evaluate the role of child temperament factors, mothers' emotion competence, level of maternal depressive symptoms, and contextual risk factors (single parent status, number of residential moves, and number of changes in partners) as causal factors in the development of children's emotion competence and social behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Because our previous longitudinal studies showed that emotion knowledge is a significant predictor of academic competence (measured by both teacher ratings and child assessment), we expect EBP to improve children's performance in school as well as their emotional and social adjustment. Improvement in Head Start parents' and children's emotion competence and social functioning is expected to have beneficial effects on the behavioral aspects of mental and physical health.