Caregiving-related early adversities and parental context effects on adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation

Emotion differentiation – the ability to identify specific experienced emotions – correlates with psychological health. Although theorized to develop through caregiving experiences, contextual effects on emotion differentiation in developmental populations have rarely been investigated, particularly among youth who have experienced disruptions in early caregiving. Here, we examined how adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation varies across socio-emotional contexts and whether these patterns differ following exposure to severe caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs). Adolescents aged 10–17 years with or without crEAs ( N = 81; mean age = 13.49, SD = 1.97; 53% male/47% female; 9%-Asian American, 28%-Black/African American, 34%-White/European American, 28%-Other) completed a 7-day ecological momentary assessment protocol (4–5 surveys/day), reporting emotions and social contexts. At the trait level (spanning all contexts), after controlling for covariates, there were no significant group differences in emotion differentiation. At the momentary level, negative momentary emotion differentiation decreased following negative parent-related contexts compared to other contexts. However, the momentary emotions’ standard deviation indicated more differentiated phasic intensification of a few negative emotions. Importantly, exposure to crEAs attenuated these contextual effects, F (3, 2,317) = 3.06/3.75, p = .027/.011. These findings provide initial evidence linking severe crEAs to affective dynamic processes and raise the hypothesis that early caregiving disruptions attenuate momentary parental modulation effects on emotion differentiation.