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Parents are known to provide a lasting basis for their children's social development. Understanding parent-driven socialization is particularly relevant in adolescence, as an increasing social independence is developed. However, the relationship between key parenting styles of care and control and the microlevel expression of daily-life social interactions has been insufficiently studied. Adolescent and young adult twins and their nontwin siblings (N = 635; mean age = 16.6; age range = 14.2-21.9; 58.6% female; 79.5% in or having completed higher secondary/tertiary education; 2.8% speaking language other than Dutch at home) completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) on parental care and control. Participants also completed a 6-day experience sampling period (10 daily beeps, mean compliance = 68.0%) to assess daily-life social interactions. Higher overall parental bonding quality (of both parents) related to more positive social experiences in daily life (e.g., belonging in company), but not to more social behaviors (e.g., being with others). Factor analysis indicated a three-factor structure of the PBI, with care, denial of psychological autonomy, and encouragement of behavioral freedom. Paternal care was uniquely predictive of better social experiences. These findings demonstrate how parenting styles may be uniquely associated with how adolescents experience their social world, with a potentially important role for fathers in particular. This complements the long-held idea of socialization through parenting by bringing it into the context of daily life and implies how both conceptualizations of social functioning and interventions aimed at alleviating social dysfunction might benefit from a stronger consideration of day-to-day social experiences.

Background: Mood disorders involve a complex interplay between multifaceted internal emotional states, and complex external inputs. Dynamical systems theory suggests that this interplay between aspects of moods and environmental stimuli may hence determine key psychopathological features of mood disorders, including the stability of mood states, the response to external inputs, how controllable mood states are, and what interventions are most likely to be effective. However, a comprehensive computational approach to all these aspects has not yet been undertaken. Methods: Here, we argue that the combination of ecological momentary assessments (EMA) with a well-established dynamical systems framework—the humble Kalman filter—enables a comprehensive account of all these aspects. We first introduce the key features of the Kalman filter and optimal control theory and their relationship to aspects of psychopathology. We then examine the psychometric and inferential properties of combining EMA data with Kalman filtering across realistic scenarios. Finally, we apply the Kalman filter to a series of EMA datasets comprising over 700 participants with and without symptoms of depression. Results: The results show a naive Kalman filter approach performs favourably compared to the standard vector autoregressive approach frequently employed, capturing key aspects of the data better. Furthermore, it suggests that the depressed state involves alterations to interactions between moods; alterations to how moods responds to external inputs; and as a result an alteration in how controllable mood states are. We replicate these findings qualitatively across datasets and explore an extension to optimal control theory to guide therapeutic interventions. Conclusions: Mood dynamics are richly and profoundly altered in depressed states. The humble Kalman filter is a well-established, rich framework to characterise mood dynamics. Its application to EMA data is valid; straightforward; and likely to result in substantial novel insights both into mechanisms and treatments. Author summary: In this study, we aimed to understand the dynamics of mood in the context of depression, utilizing experience sampling data and well-established mathematical techniques. Our approach sought to overcome limitations of traditional methods and accurately capture the dynamics of moods in real-life situations. Through the application of a Kalman filter to examine mood trajectories in experience sampling data from various datasets, including both patients with depression and healthy controls, we were able to capture the evolution of mood, interaction among different mood items, and responsiveness to environmental inputs. The study revealed distinct dynamical features characteristic of depression, highlighted the potential of using external factors to influence mood and potentially shift between stable emotional states. The findings offer valuable insights into the impact of depression on mood dynamics and potential intervention strategies, contributing to a better understanding of depression mechanisms. The study also acknowledges the challenges of employing complex models to depict sparse and noisy data, emphasizing the need for further research to address these complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Self‐esteem and self‐esteem stability are important factors during adolescence and young adulthood that can be negatively impacted by childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms. We examined whether childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms are associated with decreased global self‐esteem as well as increased self‐esteem instability as measured with experience sampling method. In addition, we examined if childhood adversity moderates the association between psychiatric symptoms and self‐esteem outcomes. Methods: Our study consisted of 788 adolescents and young adults who were part of a twin pair. The twin structure was not of interest to the current study. Mean age was 16.8 (SD = 2.38, range: 14−25), 42% was male. We used a multilevel modeling approach to examine our hypotheses to account for the presence of twins in the data set. Results: Childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms were negatively associated with global self‐esteem (respectively standardized β = −.18, SE = 0.04, p <.0001 and standardized β = −.45, SE = 0.04, p <.0001), with a larger effect for psychiatric symptoms. Similarly, both were associated with increased self‐esteem instability (respectively standardized β =.076, SE = 0.025, p =.002 and standardized β =.11, SE = 0.021, p <.0001). In addition, interactions between childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms on both global self‐esteem (standardized β =.06, SE = 0.01, p <.0001) and self‐esteem instability (standardized β = −.002, SE = 0.0006, p =.001) were found, showing that the negative association of psychiatric symptoms with self‐esteem outcomes is less pronounced in young people with higher levels of childhood adversity, or formulated differently, is more pronounced in young people with little or no exposure to childhood adversity. Conclusion: Global self‐esteem and self‐esteem instability in young people are influenced by both current psychiatric symptomatology and exposure to childhood adversity. Those with more psychiatric symptoms show worse self‐esteem and higher self‐esteem instability, which is moderated by childhood adversity. For young people with high childhood adversity levels lower self‐esteem and higher self‐esteem instability are less influenced by reductions in psychiatric symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research emphasizes the importance of well-being in old age and its association with positive mental and physical health at earlier stages of aging during midlife. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has the potential to support positive aging processes. This study examines the feasibility and acceptability of a new unguided eHealth ACT module in a population from 40 years onwards. Data were collected at two measurement points in time (before and after completion of the ACT module). In total, 313 participants (range = 40–75 years; mean(SD) = 54 years (8.3); 76% female) had 8 weeks access to the ACT module and responded to the feasibility questionnaire, upon completion of the module. Logged data (time spent online per session and in total, number of attended sessions) was also analyzed. Of the respondents, 76% reported a completion rate of 75%–100%. On average, 3.5 h (SD = 6.4) per week were spent on the module and practicing the ACT skills. The mean evaluation of the module was 7.4 (SD = 1.2, range = 1–10). Approximately 80% of the participants rated each session as (very) good. Absence of guidance was marked as a limitation. The results indicate good feasibility and acceptance of this unguided eHealth module. This is a promising result as this is, to our knowledge, the first study applying an eHealth ACT module to the general population in the context of positive aging. The effectiveness results will be addressed in a future paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]