Identifying Causal Mechanisms in an Emotion-Based Preventive Intervention

描述(申请人提供)：基于情绪的预防计划(EBP)，现在包括一门面向父母和幼儿的情绪课程，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与儿童适应行为的增加和不适应行为的减少一致相关。对EBP的初步研究表明，它促进了情绪知识的发展。本研究还提供了情绪知识促进情绪调节发展的初步证据。反过来，根据情绪知识和情绪调节定义的情绪能力促进了社会能力的发展，并降低了经济困难儿童中破坏性、攻击性和内在化行为的流行率。我们之前的研究也表明，父母参与EBP活动的数量有助于对他们的孩子产生有益的影响，并激励父母在EBP中加入情感课程。我们将随机将Head Start中心分为EBP治疗和对照治疗(我可以解决问题)。本研究的目的是：(1)加强和扩展EBP作为城区学前教育儿童预防干预有效性的现有研究结果；(2)更深入地考察情绪知识作为情绪调节发展的因果机制的作用；(3)进一步评估情绪能力作为适应性社会行为发展的因果因素的作用。(4)评价儿童气质因素、母亲情绪能力、母亲抑郁症状水平、背景危险因素(单亲地位、搬家次数、伴侣变化次数)在儿童情绪能力和社会行为发展中的作用。公共卫生相关性：由于我们之前的纵向研究表明，情绪知识是学业能力的重要预测因素(通过教师评分和儿童评估来衡量)，我们预计EBP将改善儿童在学校的表现以及他们的情绪和社会适应能力。父母和孩子的情绪能力和社会功能的改善有望对心理和身体健康的行为方面产生有益影响。

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.