Two studies were designed to investigate the relation between emotion socialization variables, social cognitive knowledge, and children's social competence. In Study 1, the expression and situation knowledge of 46 low-income preschoolers were assessed. Peer competence within the preschool setting was also evaluated. Mothers completed questionnaires designed to assess negative emotion socialization practices. Results showed that maternal reports of their emotion socialization practices were related to sad and angry situation knowledge. The aggregate measure of situation knowledge predicted peer competence. In Study 2, 41 low-income preschoolers were observed in a caregiving situation with their younger siblings. The preschoolers' rate of caregiving behavior was recorded and measures of their situation knowledge, emotional role taking, and caregiving script knowledge were obtained. Mothers completed emotion socialization questionnaires. Situation knowledge was the social cognitive variable that predicted sibling caregiving behavior. However, only the maternal emotion socialization variables were directly related to sibling caregiving behavior. These findings highlight the importance of situation knowledge and emotion socialization practices for low-income children's social competence with peers and siblings and provide much needed information on the social development of low-income children.

The prospective relation of maternal emotion philosophy to children's emotion understanding and regulation and positive and negative adjustment was investigated. Sixty-nine African American youth (50% male; M age = 11.29 years) and their maternal caregivers living in high violence areas of a midsized city participated in this interview study. Caregivers' meta-emotion philosophy predicted child emotion understanding and emotion regulation, which also were associated with Time 2 grades, internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and social skills after controlling for Time 1 adjustment. Emotional understanding mediated the relationship between caregivers' emotional socialization and boys' internalizing behaviors and between caregivers' emotional socialization and girls' social skills. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the relationships between emotional socialization and all four outcomes for boys. Implications for future work on emotion socialization and clinical intervention, particularly related to emotion regulation, are discussed.

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This article provides an interdisciplinary review of theory and research linking aspects of emotional competence to learning and school-related outcomes across childhood. Drawing upon work in developmental psychology, educational psychology, and teacher education, this review also discusses the role of teachers in socializing students' emotions and considers the strategies and the challenges they face in regulating their own emotions in the classroom context. Future directions for research in this area are proposed.Emotional competence is a generic term that has been applied to many types of emotionrelated skills. Early research focused on understanding more about the underlying essences of the construct. Most recently, emotional competence has been conceived as including the awareness of emotion, the ability to use and understand emotion-related vocabulary, knowledge of facial expressions and the situations that elicit them, knowledge of the cultural rules for displaying emotion, and skill in managing the intensity of one's emotional displays in ways that are appropriate to the audience and the situation (Cole et al. 2004;Eisenberg and Spinrad 2004).Emotions are thought to be rooted in relationships because they provide information that is most meaningful in the context of social exchanges (Saarni 1999;Thompson 1991). Thus, for the past 15 years or so, researchers interested in emotions have tended to focus on individual differences in emotional competence and the implications of these differences for understanding social relationships. These studies have generally shown that, among children, the understanding of emotion is associated with peer popularity, the ability to initiate social exchanges with peers, positive conceptions of peer experiences, and prosocial and empathy-related behavior (Denham 1986;

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