Citation

Snyder J, Brockman C, Stoolmiller M. Nonlinear Dyn. Psychol. Life Sci. 2012; 16(3): 313-330.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

22695151

Abstract

This report examines how the relative attractor strengths of children's display of three emotion states, anger, sadness/fear, and neutral-engaged, are associated with exposure to maternal negative affect and care giving disruptions, and to child antisocial behavior and depression. Exposure to negative maternal affect was associated with a weaker attractor state for sadness or fear displays relative to those for anger and neutral-engaged displays. Exposure to care giving disruptions was associated with stronger attractor strength for anger and sadness/fear relative to that for neutral-engaged. Overt and covert antisocial behaviors were associated with weaker attractor states for sadness/fear displays relative that for the neutral-engaged displays. Overt antisocial behavior was associated with a stronger attractor state for anger displays relative to that for neutral-engaged displays, and covert antisocial behavior with a weaker attractor state for fear/sadness displays relative to that for neutral-engaged displays. Child depressive symptoms were marginally associated with a stronger attractor state for fear/sadness displays relative to neutral-engaged. The data suggest the attractor strengths for emotion display states are affected by social experience and that between-individual risk for various forms of psychopathology is related to the relative intra-individual attractor strength of various emotion displays in a multi-state emotion display system.

Language: en