Parents' Emotion‐Related Beliefs, Behaviours, and Skills Predict Children's Recognition of Emotion

Abstract

Children who are able to recognize others’ emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents’ own emotion-related beliefs, behaviors, and skills. We examined parents’ beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents’ emotion labeling and teaching behaviors, and parents’ skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school-aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty-nine parent-child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents’ beliefs, behaviors, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood, and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age-related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development.

EUReKA! A Conceptual Model of Emotion Understanding

“…These findings likely reflect the methodological ease with which measures of generalized others are constructed; it may be easier to establish criterion validity for items assessing the recognition and knowledge of generalized others’ emotions than of the self, a parent, spouse, coworker, or child. However, the lack of Self or Other focus constrains what we know about emotion understanding skills in highly important and relevant domains, limits the ecological validity of current emotion understanding measures, and hinders understanding of the development of these skills, as they likely emerge and develop within familiar contexts, such as family or work settings (Castro, Halberstadt, Lozada, & Craig, 2014; Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Halberstadt et al, 2001). …”

A Three‐factor Structure of Emotion Understanding in Third‐grade Children

“…Children in middle childhood are also increasingly expected to understand others’ emotions in contexts that include multiple, rapidly changing, and fragmented emotion expressions and experiences (Halberstadt et al, 2013; Pons et al, 2004). Together, children’s developing skills and the contextual demands they face may spawn more complex and differentiated skills, such as the interpersonal recognition of emotion in familiar others (e.g., Castro, Halberstadt, Lozada, & Craig, 2015; Ickes, 2011) and knowledge of mixed and moral emotions (e.g., Brown & Dunn, 1996; Pons et al). Further, children’s skills in knowing which emotion regulatory responses to select and apply in social situations, as well as self-awareness about their own skill, may become increasingly sophisticated and differentiated as children learn how to effectively manage their emotions (Eisenberg & Morris, 2002).…”

The Role of Mothers' Parenting Attitudes and Child's Perceived Parenting Attitudes on Children's Emotion Recognition

“…Bu bulgu da ebeveynlerin duygusal olarak sıcak ve reddedici olmasının birbirinin zıttı özellikler barındırdığını, geçmiş çalışmalarla da uyumlu olarak, ortaya koymuştur (Önder ve Gülay, 2007;Zarra-Nezhad ve ark., 2015). Ebeveyn ret boyutunun özelliklerini yakından incelediğimizde, bu yaklaşımda duyguları göstermek ya da ifade etmek tehlike, problem ve zayıflık olarak görülür ve bu ebeveynler, çocuklarının duygularını inkar etme ya da küçümseme eğiliminde olurlar (Castro, Halberstadt, Lozada ve Craig, 2015). Reddedici ebeveyn tutumuna sahip anne-babalar, çoğunlukla çocuklarına şefkatsiz ve soğuk davranırlar ve çocuklarının duygularını değerli ve konuşmaya değer bulmazlar.…”