Maternal negative expressiveness and preschool children's problem behaviors: Social information processing perspective

Maternal negative expressiveness has been linked to increased internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors in preschool children, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. This study examined the association between maternal negative expressiveness and preschool children's problem behaviors, with a particular focus on the mediating role of children's social information processing and the moderating role of paternal positive parenting. A multi-method, multi-informant design was employed with 309 preschool children and their parents. Mothers reported their own negative expressiveness (Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire) and children's internalizing and externalizing problems (Child Behavior Checklist); fathers reported positive parenting (Alabama Parenting Questionnaire-Preschool Version). Each child was individually interviewed using a structured social information processing task. A moderated mediation model was tested, with the Johnson-Neyman technique probing significant interactions and identifying regions of simple slope significance. Results indicated that maternal negative expressiveness was positively associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems in preschoolers. Children's encoding accuracy, the initial stage of social information processing, partially mediated these associations. Paternal positive parenting moderated the link between maternal negative expressiveness and child encoding ability. Specifically, maternal negative expressiveness negatively predicted encoding only when paternal positive parenting was low; this association was nonsignificant when paternal positive parenting was high. Overall, maternal negative expressiveness is associated with preschool children's problem behaviors partly through its adverse effect on encoding skills, an effect buffered by paternal positive parenting. These findings suggest that interventions targeting maternal negative expressiveness, paternal positive parenting, and children's social-cognitive encoding abilities may help prevent early-emerging behavioral problems.