Attentional negativity and emotional symptoms as serial mediators linking parental verbosity to non-suicidal self-injury in Chinese pre-adolescents

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in pre-adolescents represents an escalating clinical concern, with early onset being a predictor of persistent self-harm and future suicidal behavior. Despite growing recognition of the role of family dynamics in youth NSSI, the specific mechanisms through which parental communication behaviors contribute to early-onset NSSI remain poorly characterized, particularly within the Chinese cultural context. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between a specific parental communication behavior-parental verbosity (excessive, repetitive verbal reasoning during discipline)-and pre-adolescent NSSI, testing a mediation pathway involving the Attentional Negativity Index (ANI: a self-reported measure of perceived attention to negative versus positive information) and emotional symptoms (EM). A total of 1,452 pre-adolescents (aged 10 - 12 years) and their parents were recruited from eight elementary schools in Tianjin, China. A multi-informant approach was employed specifically for emotional symptoms (EM), collecting data through both student-report and parent-report to enhance measurement validity and reduce single-informant bias. Parental verbosity was assessed via parent-report, while ANI and NSSI were assessed via student-report, as these constructs reflect children's subjective internal experiences that are most accurately captured by self-report. Serial mediation analyses using Hayes' PROCESS macro were employed to examine the proposed cognitive-emotional mechanisms. The prevalence of NSSI in this sample was 23.8%. Serial mediation analyses revealed a significant pathway from parental verbosity to NSSI via sequential mediation of ANI and emotional symptoms (indirect effect = 0.024, 95% CI [0.004, 0.049]); however, the total indirect effect across all pathways was non-significant (Effect = 0.026, 95% CI [-0.047, 0.103]). Specifically, parental verbosity was positively associated with self-reported ANI, which in turn predicted higher levels of emotional symptoms, ultimately linking to increased NSSI frequency. This serial mediation pathway remained significant in sensitivity analyses using parent-reported emotional symptoms (indirect effect = 0.008, 95% CI [0.001, 0.017]), providing preliminary evidence consistent with the proposed pathway, pending replication in independent longitudinal samples. The present findings are consistent with a cognitive-emotional cascade model in which parental verbosity, self-reported ANI, and EM are sequentially associated with NSSI in pre-adolescents. While these findings identify a potential mechanism linking a specific parental communication behavior to NSSI, the cross-sectional design precludes causal inference. Longitudinal research is needed to establish temporal precedence and causal directionality.