Mediating and Moderating Processes in the Relationbetween Maltreatment and Psychopathology: Mother-ChildRelationship Quality and Emotion Regulation

摘要

The present study investigated underlying pro-cesses of the effect of maltreatment on psychopathology(i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems) in a group of111 maltreated and 110 nonmaltreated 7-10 year-oldchildren (60% boys). We tested the moderating and/ormediating roles of emotion regulation and the mother-childrelationship quality (pattern of relatedness) using StructuralEquation Modeling. Emotion regulation, but not the patternof relatedness, mediated the relation between maltreatmentand psychopathology. This mediation was moderated by thepattern of relatedness: For the group of children with aninsecure pattern of relatedness, maltreatment was related tolower levels of emotion regulation, which was predictive ofhigher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptom-atology. In contrast, for the secure relatedness group, there was no mediation by emotion regulation since the impact ofmaltreatment on emotion regulation was not significant.Implications of the mediating role of emotion regulationand the buffering role of the mother-child relationshipquality were discussed.