Cross-lagged Relationships among Interpersonal Closeness, Early Language Skills, and Emotion Understanding in Toddlers

Abstract

This longitudinal study examined how parent-child closeness, teacher-child closeness, and language skills predicted and were predicted by emotion understanding in early years. Participants were 128 Hong-Kong-Chinese toddlers (74 girls; Mage = 33.03 months). Parents and teachers reported their closeness with each child, and children’s oral language and emotion understanding were tested at two timepoints six months apart. Cross-lagged modeling analyses showed a unidirectional link from parent-child closeness predicting emotion understanding, a unidirectional link from emotion understanding predicting teacher-child closeness, and a bidirectional relation between oral language and emotion understanding. This study connects children’s emotion understanding with their own characteristics and their social relationships in the family and classroom settings, providing a fuller picture of early emotional development across multiple contexts.