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

Emotion differentiation (ED)—the ability to identify specific experienced emotions—is essential for psychological wellbeing. Although ED is theorized to develop through caregiving experiences, contextual effects on ED in developmental populations have rarely been investigated, particularly among youth who have experienced disruptions in early caregiving relationships. To illuminate the development of ED, we explored how adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation (mED) varies across socio-emotional contexts and whether these patterns differ following exposure to severe caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs). Adolescents (N = 81; ages 10–17) with/without crEAs completed a 7-day ecological momentary assessment (4–5 surveys/day), reporting emotions and social contexts. At the trait level, no significant differences in ED emerged following crEAs after controlling for covariates. Consistent with prior research on community samples, higher anxiety/depression was associated with lower negative trait ED across groups. At the momentary level, negative mED decreased following negative parent-related contexts compared to other contexts. However, the standard deviation of these momentary emotions indicated that negative parental contexts were followed by a phasic intensification restricted to a few negative emotions. Importantly, exposure to crEAs attenuated these contextual effects. These data offer initial investigation for the complex ways in which early disruptions to caregiving relationships may shape adolescents’ emotion differentiation.