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Emotional dysregulation is thought to underlie risk for both anxiety and depressive disorders. However, despite high rates of comorbidity, anxiety and depression are phenotypically different. Apart from nosological differences (e.g., worry for anxiety, low mood for depression), it remains unclear how the emotional dysregulation inherent in individual differences in trait anxiety and depression severity present on a day-to-day basis. One approach that may facilitate addressing these questions is to utilize Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) using mobile phones to parse the temporal dynamics of affective experiences into specific parameters. An emerging literature in affective science suggests that risk for anxiety and depressive disorders may be associated with variation in the mean and instability/variability of emotion. Here we examine the extent to which distinct temporal dynamic parameters uniquely predict risk for anxiety versus depression. Over 10 days, 105 individuals rated their current positive and negative affective state several times each day. Using two distinct approaches to statistically assess mean and instability of positive and negative affect, we found that individual differences in trait anxiety was generally associated with increased instability of positive and negative affect whereas mean levels of positive and negative affect were generally associated with individual differences in depression. These data provide evidence that the emotional dysregulation underlying risk for mood versus anxiety disorders unfolds in distinct ways and highlights the utility in examining affective dynamics to understand psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamic patterns of influence between parents and children have long been considered key to understanding family relationships. Despite this, most observational research on emotion in parent-child interactions examines global behaviors at the expense of exploring moment-to-moment fluctuations in emotions that are important for relational outcomes. Using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and growth curve analysis, this investigation explored emotion dynamics during parent-adolescent conflict interactions, focusing not only on concurrently shared emotional states but also on time-lagged synchrony of parents' and adolescents' emotions relative to one another. Mother-adolescent dyads engaged in a 10-min conflict discussion and reported on their satisfaction with the process and outcome of the discussion. Emotions were coded using the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) and were collapsed into the following categories: negativity, positivity, and validation/interest. RQA and growth curve analyses revealed that negative and positive emotions were characterized by a concurrently synchronous pattern across all dyads, with the highest recurrence rates occurring around simultaneity. However, lower levels of concurrent synchrony of negative emotions were associated with higher discussion satisfaction. We also found that patterns of negativity differed with age: Mothers led negativity in dyads with younger adolescents, and adolescents led negativity in dyads with older adolescents. In contrast to negative and positive emotions, validation/interest showed the time-lagged pattern characteristic of turn-taking, and more highly satisfied dyads showed stronger patterns of time-lagged coordination in validation/interest. Our findings underscore the dynamic nature of emotions in parent-adolescent interactions and highlight the important contributions of these moment-to-moment dynamics toward overall interaction quality. (PsycINFO Database Record