Many studies focus on proximal associations between parental sensitivity and emotional well-being in early childhood, with less data examining how parenting in infancy predicts children's emotional trajectories across childhood, in particular negative emotional symptoms of anxiety and depression. Thus, this study utilized data from The Family Life Project (N = 1015), a prospective study of child development in rural poverty, and assessed whether sensitive parenting in the first 4 years of life predicted child internalizing emotional symptoms (i.e., anxiety and depression) from kindergarten to fifth grade and whether early child executive functioning mediated this relationship. Path models indicated that observation of sensitive parenting predicted a decrease in teachers’ report of child negative emotional symptoms over time and predicted fewer negative emotional symptoms in fifth grade. Moreover, though executive functioning performance did not mediate change in symptoms over time, executive functioning did mediate the relationship between sensitive parenting and fifth-grade symptoms, suggesting that executive functioning is one mechanism by which early sensitive parenting buffers long-term emotional development. Findings highlight the importance of early parenting and executive functioning in development of anxiety and depression symptoms and suggests potential targets for transdiagnostic intervention.

中文翻译：

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早期养育的发展级联、执行功能的出现和整个童年时期的情绪症状

许多研究侧重于儿童早期父母敏感性和情绪健康之间的近端关联，很少有数据研究婴儿时期的养育如何预测儿童整个童年时期的情绪轨迹，特别是焦虑和抑郁的负面情绪症状。因此，本研究利用了家庭生活项目（N = 1015)，一项关于农村贫困儿童发展的前瞻性研究，评估了生命前 4 年的敏感养育是否能预测儿童从幼儿园到五年级的内化情绪症状（即焦虑和抑郁），以及早期儿童执行功能是否介导这种关系。路径模型表明，对敏感养育的观察预测随着时间的推移，教师对儿童消极情绪症状的报告会减少，并预测五年级时消极情绪症状会减少。此外，虽然执行功能表现并没有调节症状随时间的变化，但执行功能确实调节了敏感养育与五年级症状之间的关系，表明执行功能是早期敏感育儿缓冲长期情绪发展的一种机制。研究结果强调了早期养育和执行功能在焦虑和抑郁症状发展中的重要性，并提出了跨诊断干预的潜在目标。