Emotion Socialization Practices Research Articles

The affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of implementing antecedent‐focused emotion regulation strategies in childhood

AbstractDifferent components of emotional responding may be affected by using specific emotion regulation strategies that enable children's volitional self‐regulation. This study examined the affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of experimentally instructing children to deploy distraction or reappraisal to regulate negative emotion during an evocative film clip. One‐hundred eighty‐four 4‐ to 11‐year‐old children [M = 7.66 years; SD = 2.33 years; 94 girls; mixed race (36%), Latino/Latina (30%), European American (19%), African American (11%), Asian American (2%), or other (2%)] participated. Neither strategy affected observed distress or self‐reported negative emotion. Relative to a control condition, children instructed to use reappraisal reported attenuated rumination. Distraction also predicted attenuated rumination, as well as a pattern of parasympathetic reactivity indicative of disengagement that correlated with parents' reported use of minimizing and punitive emotion socialization practices. Findings underscore the utility of multi‐method approaches that examine parasympathetic activity in conjunction with volitional measures of self‐regulation.

Maternal and paternal emotion dysregulation profiles: Links to parent and child functioning

This study examined profiles of parental emotion dysregulation among 379 mothers (Mage = 35.99) and 397 fathers (Mage = 34.93) of children aged 8 to 12 using latent profile analyses. Three maternal (Low, Moderate, High Dysregulation) and four paternal (Low, Moderate, High Dysregulation, Emotionally Aware but Extremely Dysregulated) profiles emerged. Low (vs. high) profiles were generally associated with more supportive parental emotion socialization practices, better child emotion regulation, and lower child psychopathology. The Emotionally Aware but Extremely Dysregulated paternal profile was distinct in composition. It was associated with the poorest child psychopathology, but not the poorest child emotion regulation, of all paternal profiles, and with the highest engagement in all socialization practices (e.g., supportive practices). Findings suggest that unique patterns of deficits in parental emotion regulation may play a role in socialization of positive emotion and child functioning, particularly for fathers. These profiles can inform specific emotion-related targets for parent intervention.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change in a School-Based Intervention Combining Universal and Indicated Prevention for Preschoolers’ Behavior Problems

ABSTRACT The Social-Emotional Prevention Program (SEP) is a multi-focused intervention combining universal and indicated intervention strategies delivered face-to-face and through the use of technology. The study’s objectives were to assess comparatively SEP effectiveness as a function of preschoolers’ baseline risk of externalizing problems and to evaluate its hypothesized mechanisms of action. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted with five schools assigned to either the intervention or to a comparison condition (wait-list control). Structural equation models (SEM) and complier average causal effects (CACE) were conducted to evaluate program effectiveness and mechanisms of change. Research Findings: SEP participation was associated with improved social-emotional competence irrespective of baseline risk and at-risk preschoolers were more likely to exhibit reductions in externalizing problems. However, perceptions about which risk group benefited more varied as a function of rater. Patterns for SEP mechanisms of action suggest that these were similar across risk status with both child emotion regulation and parental emotion socialization practices emerging as paths to improved social-emotional competencies. Practice and Policy: The present findings add to the extant evidence suggesting that multi-focused programs combining universal and indicated prevention strategies could be successfully delivered in schools to promote social-emotional learning.

Intimate partner violence and preschool self‐regulation: Examining the role of maternal emotion socialization in Black families

AbstractThe ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self‐regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self‐regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3–5 years, N = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem‐solving around negative affect (“supportive”), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays (“suppressive”) on children's self‐regulation. We found a significant association between higher child self‐regulation and supportive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. We also found a significant association between higher child self‐regulation and suppressive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting Black parents who teach varied strategies for emotional expression may promote children's adaptation in high‐stress family environments. Macrosystem factors such as systemic racism and discrimination as well as the threat of family violence may shape how parents approach emotion socialization and the teaching of affective self‐expression and self‐regulation.

Benefits of Engaging Head Start Parents in Emotion Socialization Practices

Developing social-emotional skills can improve children's happiness, experiences, and ability to establish positive relationships. Children from low-income families experience higher risk factors than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. Hence, fostering these skills early at home and in the classroom is essential. Past research demonstrates various interventions to reduce problem behaviors and improve emotional socialization in children, as well as the impact of educating parents on effective emotion socialization practices. Tuning in to Kids Online (TIKOL) is an emotion socialization parenting program aiming to support parents' understanding of children's social-emotional development and employ an emotion coaching style to help children understand, label, and regulate their emotions. This study examined the engagement, effectiveness, and acceptability of TIKOL in a small sample of Head Start parents. Findings support the use of TIKOL to improve parents' emotion coaching practices, reduce parents' distressing reactions to children's behavior, and reduce parent-reported child conduct problems.

Emotional competence training promotes teachers’ emotion socialization and classroom environment: Effects from a TIK-in-School pilot study

Primary school teachers spend many hours each day assisting students with various emotional challenges in the school environment. However, many teachers lack specific skills in how to guide and support children with challenging emotions. Thus, there is a need for interventions that directly enhance teachers’ emotional competence and capacity to respond to students’ emotional needs, thereby ensuring that improvements in the learning environment are ongoing and sustainable.This pilot study explored implementation fidelity and acceptability and the outcomes of a newly developed emotion-focused teacher intervention, Tuning in to Kids in School (TIK-S), on primary school teachers’ emotion socialization practices and classroom environment. Two Norwegian schools were allocated into intervention or waitlist control, with 74 teachers from grades 1 to 4 participating. The intervention included group training for teachers focusing on how to identify, understand and regulate emotions and use emotion coaching with students, while reducing emotion dismissing. Assessments at pre- and post-intervention included teacher questionnaires on their emotion coaching and emotion dismissing practices and observations of the classroom environment. Data were analysed using mixed models. Facilitators reported high fidelity and participants good acceptability of content delivery. Results showed a significant decrease in teacher-reported emotion dismissing practices and improvement in observed positive classroom climate in the intervention, but not control, condition. Although non-significant, emotion coaching had an increasing trend in the intervention condition post-intervention.Participation in TIK-S contributed to improved skills in teacher's emotion socialization and improved classroom climate, factors that are important for an optimal school learning environment.

Parental affect profiles predict child emotion regulation and classroom adjustment in families experiencing homelessness

AbstractParenting shapes the development of emotion regulation skills in early childhood, laying a key foundation for social‐emotional adjustment. Unfortunately, high adversity exposure may disrupt parental emotion socialization practices and children's regulatory development. The current study used variable‐ and person‐centered approaches to evaluate links among parental emotion expressiveness, children's observed emotion regulation, and teacher‐reported adjustment among 214 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children experiencing homelessness, an indicator of high cumulative risk and acute adversity. Structured parent‐child interaction tasks were recorded on site in emergency shelters over the summer and micro‐socially coded for parent and child expressions of anger, positive affect, and internalizing distress. We anticipated that parental modeling of predominantly negative emotion expression would be associated with more child dysregulation during parent‐child interaction and worse adjustment at school, as reported by teachers the following school year. Preliminary analyses indicated that children's observed difficulty downregulating anger was associated robustly with teacher‐reported social‐behavioral problems. Latent profile analysis was used to identify three patterns of parental emotion expression characterized by above‐average expression of positive affect, internalizing distress, and anger. Parents’ likelihood of membership in the elevated anger profile significantly predicted children's observed difficulty down‐regulating anger and higher social‐behavioral problems at school. In addition to ongoing efforts to reduce poverty‐related risk, supporting adaptive anger regulation in parents and young children may be important for enhancing resilience among families experiencing homelessness and similar conditions of high cumulative risk.

Parent Emotion Talk with Preschoolers from Low-Income Mexican American and Chinese American Families: Links to Sociocultural Factors.

Emotion talk (ET), an emotion socialization practice theorized to promote children's emotion understanding and emotion regulation, has been linked to better socioemotional adjustment in diverse samples. Immigrant children face developmentally unique challenges and opportunities related to their multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences. The present study aimed to identify sociocultural correlates of parent ET in two groups of low-income immigrant families with preschool-age children: Mexican American (MA) and Chinese American (CA) families. In 90 parent-child dyads (child age = 38 to 70 months, 59% girls; 46 Mexican American and 44 Chinese American) recruited from Head Start programs, parents' (mostly mothers') ET quality and quantity (i.e., use of emotion words, emotion questions and explanations, and overall elaborateness of ET) were coded from verbal transcripts of a shared picture book reading task. First, we found similarities and differences in ET across the two groups. Both MA and CA parents used emotion words, emotion questions, and emotion reasoning, whereas linking the story to personal emotion experience was infrequent. MA parents used more negative emotion words, emotion reasoning, and engaged in more elaborate ET than CA parents. Second, we examined the unique relations of multiple socio-cultural factors (SES, cultural orientations, parent and child demographics) to parent ET. Parent education and child age were associated positively with emotion questions, income was associated positively with emotion reasoning, and parents' heritage culture orientation was associated positively with the elaborateness of ET. The findings highlight the need to consider socio-cultural variations in emotion socialization practices when adapting and disseminating socioemotional learning interventions.

The link between maternal emotion socialization practices and Turkish preschoolers’ emotion regulation: Moderating roles of paternal emotional support

The link between maternal emotion socialization practices and Turkish preschoolers’ emotion regulation: Moderating roles of paternal emotional support

Maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing problems: The mediation of emotion socialization

AbstractObjectiveThis study examined the mediation of mothers' ratings of their maternal emotion socialization practices in the relation between mothers' depressive symptoms and children's internalizing problems in a Brazilian community sample.BackgroundMaternal depression and maternal emotion socialization reactions contribute to children's internalizing problems, but the mechanisms through which these variables interact remain unclear.MethodParticipants were 153 mothers of children between 3 and 8 years old. The Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES) evaluated mothers' ratings of their emotion socialization practices, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) assessed children's internalizing behaviors, and the Beck Depression Inventory I (BDI‐I) measured maternal depressive symptoms.ResultsMaternal ratings of non‐supportive emotion socialization reactions partially mediated the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing problems. There were no effects of maternal depressive symptoms on maternal supportive emotion socialization reactions and child internalizing problems.ConclusionEarly psychosocial interventions that reduce non‐supportive reactions to children's emotions may be an important way of assisting children in understanding and managing their negative emotions.

Prospective within-family bidirectional effects between parental emotion socialization practices and Chinese adolescents' psychosocial adjustment.

Previous research indicates that parental emotion socialization (ES) practices play important roles in adolescents' social and emotional development. However, longitudinal studies testing bidirectional effects are relatively scarce. Additionally, most studies have focused on people from Western societies. In the current 3-year, multi-informant, longitudinal study of Chinese adolescents and their parents, we investigated prospective bidirectional effects between parental positive ES practices and adolescents' psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-esteem and depressive symptoms). Adolescents (N = 710 at T1, 50% boys, Mage = 12.41, SD = 0.59) reported on parental positive ES practices and their own depressive symptoms and self-esteem when they were in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. Mothers and fathers reported on their own use of positive ES practices at all three time points. We utilized a random intercept cross-lagged panel model to examine between- and within-family effects. Overall results showed robust effects of adolescent depressive symptoms on parental positive ES practices and bidirectional effects between parental ES and adolescent self-esteem. Effects differed by informants whether using adolescent-perceived data, or mother- or father-reported data. However, these child effects and bidirectional effects did not differ by adolescent sex. Our findings add to the understanding of parental ES and adolescent psychosocial adjustment.

Chinese immigrant child and maternal reactions to disappointment: Cultural fit impacts the bidirectional associations

AbstractCulture provides a context in which emotion socialization is embedded, and the bidirectional effects between parents’ emotion socialization and children's emotional behaviors may work differently across cultures. To understand how emotion socialization may be shaped by the cultural context, we examined the moderating role of Asian cultural values in bidirectional associations between maternal emotion socialization practices and child anger and sadness. Seventy‐four U.S. Chinese immigrant mothers (Mage = 40.71 years, SD = 3.61) completed measures assessing their Asian cultural values and parenting style. Children experienced a disappointment task in the lab (Cole, 1986), and mothers and their children (Mage = 6.73 years, SD = .95; 55% female) were observed at two different time intervals. Mothers’ socialization practices (emotion dismissing, emotion coaching, and moral and behavioral socialization) and children's anger and sadness responses at both intervals were coded. Mothers’ greater Asian cultural values buffered the negative effects of their emotion dismissing practices on children's anger and sadness. However, Asian cultural values did not impact the effects of children's anger and sadness on mothers’ emotion dismissing practices. When mothers endorsed fewer Asian values, their emotion coaching practices reduced children's anger and sadness. Children's anger and sadness evoked more emotion coaching practices when mothers endorsed lower levels of Asian cultural values. In addition, children's anger and sadness evoked greater moral and behavioral responses from their mothers when mothers endorsed more Asian values. Overall, findings underscored the importance of cultural values in the interplay between mothers’ emotion socialization practices and children's emotions.

Patterns of Parental Reactions to Their Children's Negative Emotions: A Cluster Analysis with a Clinical Sample.

Parents’ emotion socialization practices are an important source of influence in the development of children’s emotional competencies This study examined parental reactions to child negative emotions in a clinical sample using a cluster analysis approach and explored the associations between clusters of parents’ reactions and children’s and parents’ adjustment. The sample comprised 80 parents of Portuguese children (aged 3–13 years) attending a child and adolescent psychiatry unit. Measures to assess parental reactions to children’s negative emotions, parents’ psychopathological symptoms, parents’ emotion dysregulation, and children’s adjustment were administered to parents. Model-based cluster analysis resulted in three clusters: low unsupportive, high supportive, and inconsistent reactions clusters. These clusters differed significantly in terms of parents’ psychopathological symptoms, emotion dysregulation, and children’s adjustment. A pattern characterized by high supportive reactions to the child’s emotions was associated with higher levels of children’s adjustment. On the other hand, an inconsistent reactions pattern was associated with the worst indicators of children’s adjustment and parental emotion dysregulation. These results suggest the importance of supporting parents of children with emotional and behavioural problems so that they can be more responsive to their children’s emotional manifestations.

Culture, Emotion Socialization and Children’s Inhibitory Control

ABSTRACT In the current study, we investigated the relations among maternal emotion socialization practices and children’s inhibitory control (IC) performance in Chinese and European American families. Fifty-three Chinese (Mage = 60 months) and 52 European American (Mage = 50 months) children and their mothers participated in this study. Maternal emotion socialization was assessed using mothers’ reported reactions to children’s negative emotions by completing the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES). Child IC was assessed through two observational measures. Results revealed significant group differences. Specifically, Chinese mothers adopted more harsh responses and less distress responses as compared to European American mothers. Chinese children scored higher on IC than did European American children. Moderation analyses also suggest that maternal harsh responses and distress responses were negatively related to children’s IC performance for European American group but not for Chinese group.

Culture shapes preschoolers’ emotion recognition but not emotion comprehension: a cross-cultural study in Germany and Singapore

AbstractContemporary approaches suggest that emotions are shaped by culture. Children growing up in different cultures experience culture-specific emotion socialization practices. As a result, children growing up in Western societies (e.g., US or UK) rely on explicit, semantic information, whereas children from East Asian cultures (e.g., China or Japan) are more sensitive towards implicit, contextual cues when confronted with others’ emotions. The aim of the present study was to investigate two aspects of preschoolers’ emotion understanding (emotion recognition and emotion comprehension) in a cross-cultural setting. To this end, Singaporean and German preschoolers were tested with an emotion recognition task employing European-American and East Asian child’s faces and the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons et al., 2004). In total, 129 German and Singaporean preschoolers (mean age 5.34 years) participated. Results indicate that preschoolers were able to recognize emotions of child’s faces above chance level. In line with previous findings, Singaporean preschoolers were more accurate in recognizing emotions from facial stimuli compared to German preschoolers. Accordingly, Singaporean preschoolers outperformed German preschoolers in the Recognition component of the TEC. The overall performance in TEC did not differ between the two samples. Findings of this study provide further evidence that emotion understanding is culturally shaped in accordance with culture-specific emotion socialization practices.

Communicating emotional distress experienced by adolescents between adolescents and their mothers: Patterns and links with adolescents’ emotional distress

This research proposes the construct of Communication Patterns of adolescents’ emotional distress (CPAED) between adolescents and their parents, describing situations in which open or defective dialog about adolescents’ emotions following distressful events are formed between adolescents and their parents. By addressing adolescents’ perceptions of CPAED in adolescents and their mothers, we developed a valid and reliable scale to assess the hypothesized CPAED theoretical framework. Factor analyses in Study 1 (EFA; N = 257, Mage = 15.66 years old, SD = 0.35) and Study 2 (CFA; initial N = 684; Mage = 14.08, SD = 0.45) suggested three factors: a) Active and Reactive Emotion Sharing (ARES), referring to adolescents’ active sharing of emotion or reactive sharing in the face of maternal inquiry; b) Lack of Solicitation by mothers (LS), tracking mothers’ avoidance of communication; and c) Lack of Response by adolescents (LR), describing adolescents’ avoidance of communication even when asked by mothers. Moreover, Study 2 documented that CPAED were linked to maternal emotion socialization practices (i.e., emotion expressivity and responses to adolescents’ negative emotions) and adolescents’ negative emotion expression. Study 2 found that ARES predicted decreased emotional distress in adolescents, whereas LS and LR predicted increased emotional distress accordingly; and the three factors of CPAED incrementally predicted adolescents’ emotional distress over and beyond other theoretically relevant predictors.

Parasympathetic activity, emotion socialization, and internalizing and externalizing problems in children: Longitudinal associations between and within families.

Biopsychosocial models of children's socioemotional development highlight the joint influences of physiological regulation and parenting practices. Both high and low levels of children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) have been associated with children's maladjustment, indicative of nonlinear associations. Negative or unsupportive parental responses to children's emotions are consistently linked with internalizing (IP) and externalizing problems (EP), although few studies have examined how associations vary within families. This study examined within- and between-person associations of children's quadratic baseline RSA, negative maternal emotion socialization, and children's problems over 7 years. RSA was measured in 133 3.5-year-old children (72 female) in predominantly middle- to upper-middle socioeconomic status, Caucasian families. Mothers reported on their emotion socialization practices and their children's adjustment concurrently and 1, 5, and 7 years later. Multilevel structural equation models revealed quadratic associations between baseline RSA and both IP and EP at the between-person level, suggesting that children with moderate RSA had fewer adjustment problems, on average, than children with lower or higher RSA. Across time and between families, children displayed more problems if their mothers reported more negative responses to their children's emotions. Within families, IP were elevated on years when mothers reported higher than usual negative responses, and children with either high or low baseline RSA had more problems on years when mothers reported greater than usual negative responses to their children's emotions. Altogether, these findings suggest that high and low baseline RSA may increase the risk for maladjustment, particularly in the time-varying context of aversive emotion socialization practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction to the Special Issue: Transdiagnostic Implications of Parental Socialization of Child and Adolescent Emotions.

Developmental research suggests that parent emotion socialization plays a critical role in children's development of emotion-related skills and their risk for psychopathology. Adaptive emotion socialization practices can shape children's capacities to understand and regulate their own emotions, and when maladaptive, these practices can confer risk for both internalizing and externalizing problems, suggesting transdiagnsotic significance. Yet, emerging work suggests that the effects of parent emotion socialization are not universal and may differ based on children's unique vulnerabilities, highlighting the need to examine both parent and child factors within transactional models. Given the developmental shifts in emotion regulation capacities and autonomy across development, there is a great need for longitudinal emotion socialization research, as well as work that accounts for alternative interpretations, in this domain. Additionally, to-date much of the work in this regard has utilized parental report in isolation, making the need for cutting-edge, multi-method approaches highly salient. Further, translating scientific research into parent emotion socialization interventions is still in its infancy, with the majority of available treatments focusing on young children. As such, contributors to this special issue help address these gaps in the literature and examine the implications of a range of parent emotion socialization behaviors in the context of both adaptive and maladaptive child and adolescent emotional development. In this introduction, we highlight major themes of the special issue; further discussion and future directions are offered in the commentary accompanying this special issue.

Emotion socialization in mothers who experienced maltreatment: Mentalizing the past may help the present.

Adults who experienced childhood maltreatment (CM) are at increased risk for parenting problems. Mentalization capacity may disrupt intergenerational patterns of problematic parenting among mothers with a CM history. In this study, we examine: (a) parents' use of negative emotion socialization practices as one path of intergenerational transmission of risk in mothers with CM and (b) whether mothers' ability to mentalize about the emotion socialization behaviors of attachment figures diminishes intergenerational similarity in negative emotion socialization practices. Mentalization was operationalized as the frequency of cognitive processing words in mothers' narrative responses to questions about how and why attachment figures responded to their negative emotions during childhood. Participants included 154 mothers with and without a self-reported CM history in a case-control design, matched on child age, gender, maternal education, and race/ethnicity. Mothers with CM recollected more unsupportive responses to their negative emotions during childhood, which in turn predicted using more punishing, ignoring, and magnifying responses toward their own child's negative emotions (i.e., a significant indirect effect). However, greater cognitive processing language when describing the emotional climate of childhood diminished this pathway (i.e., a significant moderated effect). Among mothers who recollected unsupportive responses to emotions from their parents, those whose narratives included more cognitive processing words did not act in similar ways toward their own child whereas those who used fewer cognitive processing words did. These preliminary findings support the growing body of research suggesting that the quality of mentalization can be a protective factor among adults who experienced childhood maltreatment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescent Emotionality and Emotion Regulation in the Context of Parent Emotion Socialization Among Adolescents with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Call to Action with Pilot Data.

To date, only three studies have examined the role of emotion socialization in the emotional functioning of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. As such, this review article with pilot data sought to provide a call to action and first step in addressing this limited research body. Pilot data was collected with 18 adolescents (Mage = 13.5, SD = 1.6; 70% male) with a neurodevelopmental disorder and their primary caregiver. All adolescents were diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and displayed a range of comorbid disorders: autism spectrum disorder (27.8%), anxiety (66.7%), depression (44.4%), and disruptive behavior disorders (50%). Adolescents and caregivers completed a conflict discussion task while physiological, observational, and self-report measures of emotion socialization and emotional functioning were measured. Observed supportive parent emotion socialization behaviors were significantly associated with more observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies, and decreased observed and adolescent-reported negative affect, whereas non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors were associated with more observed negative affect and less observed adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Our pilot findings support growing research suggesting that adaptive parent emotion socialization practices can help foster less negative emotionality and better emotion regulation in youth with neurodevelopment disorders. We make a call to action for more emotion socialization research focused on youth with neurodevelopmental disorders, and propose four important directions for future research: 1) Research examining emotion socialization behaviors during daily life, 2) Understanding the nuanced role of emotion socialization practices, 3) Considering diversity in emotion socialization practices with clinical populations, and 4) Longitudinal and intervention research studies.