We aimed to further the understanding of maternal depressive symptoms on temporal dynamics of child emotion regulation by applying the process model of emotion regulation to preschoolers and incorporating insights from children’s moment-to-moment emotional expressions. Following 108 mother–child dyads (57 girls; 72 mothers identified as White, 23 mothers as Black or African American, 10 mothers as multi-racial, 3 mothers did not report their race) from child age three (T1; M_{child age} = 3.23; SD = 0.19) to four years old (T2; M_age = 4.21; SD = 0.15), we asked whether T1 maternal depressive symptoms predicted T2 boys' and girls' faster transitions into and slower transitions out of negative emotion displays when children were frustrated. The results from multilevel Cox Regression models for latencies and durations of emotion displays showed that child gender moderated the associations between maternal depressive symptoms and latencies of child emotion displays for sadness but not anger. Higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms predicted faster transitions into sadness only for girls but not for boys. The findings suggested that girls of mother with elevated depressive symptoms showed impairment in antecedent-focused emotion regulation of sadness.

我们的目的是通过将情绪调节过程模型应用于学龄前儿童，并结合孩子从瞬间到瞬间的情绪表达的见识，进一步了解母亲对儿童情绪调节的时空动态的抑郁症状。从三岁以下儿童（T1；M_小孩年龄 = 3.23；SD  = 0.19）到四岁（T2；M_年龄 = 4.21；SD = 0.15），我们询问当儿童沮丧时，T1的母亲抑郁症状是否预示了T2的男孩和女孩从负面情绪显示中更快地过渡到和从负面情绪显示中过渡得更慢。来自多级Cox回归模型的情感表现潜伏期和持续时间的结果表明，儿童性别调节了母亲的抑郁症状与儿童情感表现潜伏期之间的关联，而悲伤与愤怒却不相关。较高的母亲抑郁症状预示着仅对女孩而不是男孩更快地转变为悲伤。研究结果表明，抑郁症症状加剧的母亲女孩在以悲伤为中心的前因情绪调节中表现出障碍。