The Neural Basis Of Parenting Styles Impacts On College Students’ Emotion Regulation:The Moderating Role Of Sensory Processing Sensitivity

There are many studies that have shown that parenting styles have an impact on children’s emotion regulation.Positive parenting styles enable children to develop the better emotional regulation ability,while negative parenting styles may worsen children’s emotional regulation ability.After summarizing previous studies,the author has found the following limitations: Firstly,there are fewer studies on the influence of parenting on the emotional regulation ability of college students.Previous studies have proved that positive parenting and negative parenting play an important role in the development of children’s emotional regulation ability.But with the development of individuals,whether parenting style has a sustained impact on individual emotional regulation ability needs to be further verified.Secondly,the unique role of individual traits is not taken into account in the relationship between parenting style and individual emotional regulation ability.Sensory Processing Sensitivity(SPS)is hereditary personality trait that represents individuals’ sensitivity to the impact of the environment(including parenting styles).Those with higher sensitivity have stronger information processing ability,empathy,easier to notice subtle changes in the environment,and easier to be awakened by external stimuli(E.N.Aron et al.,2012;E.N.Aron & Aron,1997).Thirdly,whether the neural basis can continue to affect an individual’s emotional regulation ability in early adulthood can not be proved.Thus,based on behavior and neural basis,this study selects college students and their parents as the research object to explore the influence of parenting style on the college students’ emotional regulation ability and the moderation effect of sensory processing sensitivity.Research 1 made a complement to the original 27 items of The Highly Sensitive Personality Scale by means of semi-open interviews,forming an initial version of the adapted version of the High Sensitivity Personality Scale.Then two batches of samples(1179 people)were formally tested and formed an adapted version of The Highly Sensitive Personality Scale through item analysis and exploratory structural equation analysis modeling,confirmatory factor analysis(CFA),and the reliability the validity examination.There are 26 items on The Scale,including four sub-dimensions of Ease of excitation-negative(EOE-N),Ease of excitation-positive(EOE-P),Aesthetic Sensitivity(AES),and Low Sensory Threshold(LST).The Scale proved good reliability and validity.Research 2 employed the questionnaire method to measure the parenting style,emotional regulation ability and sensory processing sensitivity of college students in the hope of exploring the influence of parenting style on college students’ emotional regulation ability and whether the sensory processing sensitivity moderated the relationship between the parenting style what college students’ has said and college students’ emotional regulation ability.According to the result: first,the negative parenting of parents can negatively predict the emotional regulation ability of college students,and the positive parenting of parents,entirely on the contrary;second,the sensory processing sensitivity of college students can significantly negatively moderate the relationship between parents’ positive parenting and college students’ emotional regulation ability,and low-sensitivity individuals are more likely to be affected by positive parenting than high-sensitivity individuals,thereby developing higher emotional regulation ability;second,for the sub-dimension of sensory processing sensitivity,the two sub-dimensions of EOE-N and AES can negatively moderate the relationship between positive parenting and college students’ emotional regulation ability,and EOE-N and AES are more likely to be affected by positive parenting than high-sensitivity individuals,thereby developing better emotional regulation ability.The three dimensions of EOE-P,LST and AES can play a positive role in moderating the relationship between negative parenting and college students’ emotional regulation ability,and EOE-P,LST and AES are more likely to be affected by negative parenting,which accounts for their poorer emotional regulation ability.Research 3 utilizes Magnetic Resonance Technology(MRT)to explore the influence of parenting style on the emotional moderation of college students and its neural basis,and tries to find the moderation role of sensory processing sensitivity in the relationship between parenting style and college students’ emotional regulation ability.The study first collected the parenting style scales that college students and their parents filled out respectively and then observed college students completing the classic emotion moderation task in a magnetic resonance instrument(Ochsner et al.,2004).The results indicated the following perspectives: first,the negative parenting college students have reported can predict the emotional regulation ability of college students at a marginal level.However,both the positive and negative parenting replied by college students cannot significantly predict their emotional regulation ability.Second,college students’ sensory processing sensitivity can’t moderate the relationship between college students and their parents before they report parenting styles and emotional regulation abilities.DLPFC cannot mediate the relationship between college students and their parents’ reported parenting style and college students’ emotional regulation abilitiesFrom what has been mentioned above,this study found that the negative parenting reported by college students had a huge negative impact on their emotional regulation ability,and positive parenting had a significant positive effect in this aspect.However,when using the emotion moderation task to measure emotional regulation ability,it was only found that negative parenting can predict the emotional regulation ability of college students to the lowest extent.The results of MRI conducted under the task show that the negative activation of brain regions is related to negative parenting and the negative emotion perception is associated with positive activation of the brain.At the behavioural level,college students’ sensory processing sensitivity can modulate the effect of parenting style that they have reported on their moderation ability.