Early caregiving adversities mitigate parental context effects on adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation

Emotion differentiation, a correlate of emotional health, summarizes one’s ability to identify specific experienced emotions. To illuminate its development, we examined how adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation (mED) varies in response to varying socio-emotional contexts. We also asked whether mED patterns differ following exposure to caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs). Adolescents (N=81, 10-17 years-old) with/without crEAs completed a 7-day ecological momentary assessment (4-5 surveys/day), reporting on their emotions and social contexts. mED for negative emotions showed a significant reduction following negative contexts related to parents (compared to other contexts). The standard deviation of these momentary emotions suggested negative interactions with parents were followed by a phasic intensification restricted to a few negative emotions. However, a history of crEAs exposure attenuated these effects. These data illustrate the potential of measuring discrete parental interaction influences on emotional development during adolescence and highlight the importance of early caregiving experiences in adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation.