Differences in early parent-child conversations about negative versus positive emotions: Implications for the development of psychological understanding.

Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen; Wellman, Henry M.

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.38.4.564

Cited by 178 publications

(155 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Emotion is important, therefore, because it is not only thinking about emotion (which has been the focus of much theory-ofmind research) but thinking with emotion about self and others that stimulates early social understanding. This is one reason why in our studies (see as well as others (Lagattuta & Wellman 2002), relational influences are especially apparent in children's conversations about and comprehension of negative emotional events. Constraint and cooperation are both conceptually provocative experiences for young children.…”

Section: Wittgensteinian Developmental Investigationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…These include Rogoff's (1990) constructivist view of the appropriation of social cognition in shared activity, Nelson's (1996) portrayal of the growth of the linguistically mediated mind, and the inquiry of theory-of-mind researchers into social influences on psychological understanding (e.g., Lagattuta & Wellman 2002). Social developmentalists have also been concerned with the influence of social interaction on mental representation.…”

Section: Wittgensteinian Developmental Investigationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

2004

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Abstract:Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991;. It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction.Keywords: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein et al. 1998;Symons & Clark 2000), mothers' education (Cutting & Dunn 1999), and socioeconomic circumstances (Holmes et al. 1996).Furthermore, a number of studies have found correlations between language and social understanding (e.g., Cutting & Dunn 1999; de Villers 2000; Happé 1995;Jenkins & Astington 1996). In longitudinal studies, forms of family talk about mental states have been found to be related to later success on false belief tests (e.g., Brown et al. 1996;Dunn et al. 1991a;Ruffman et al. 2002). In addition, mothers who think of their children in mentalistic terms ("mindmindedness"), and therefore, presumably talk to their children about the psychological world, have children who are more advanced in understanding beliefs than are other children (Meins & Fernyhough 1999;Meins et al. 1998). Similar correlations between family interaction and the development of children's understanding of emotions have also been reported (e.g., Dunn et al. 1991b;Hooven et al. 1995;Kuebli et al. 1995;Steele et al. 1999). In a longitudinal study, Astington and Jenkins (1999) found that earlier language abilities predict later false belief performance but earlier false belief competence does not predict later language abilities, supporting the conclusion that language is important in social cognitive development.Another source of evidence that social interaction is important for the development of a mentalistic understanding comes from research with deaf children. A number o...

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Section: Wittgensteinian Developmental Investigationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Wittgensteinian Developmental Investigationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

2004

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“…Similarly, Lagattuta and Wellman (2002) found that children talked about past emotional experiences, discussed the causes of emotions, and asked open-ended questions at higher rates when talking about negative than about positive feelings (see also Stein & Miller, 1993). Children in Lagattuta and Wellman's (2002) study also talked more about the relationships between negative emotions and other mental states than between positive emotions and mental states (for a review of similar findings with adults, see Taylor, 1991). In contrast, when discussing positive emotions, both children and adults focused on people's current, on-going emotional attitudes (such as "like" or "love") rather than on more discrete emotional states (such as "happy").…”

Section: B Evidence From Other Developmental Domainsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development.

Vaish¹,

Großmann²,

Woodward³

2008

Psychological Bulletin

914

615

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There is ample empirical evidence for an asymmetry in the way that adults use positive versus negative information to make sense of their world; specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information. This bias is argued to serve critical evolutionarily adaptive functions, but its developmental presence and ontogenetic emergence have never seriously been considered. Here, we argue for the existence of the negativity bias in early development, evident especially in research on infant social referencing but also in other developmental domains. We discuss ontogenetic mechanisms underlying the emergence of this bias, and explore not only its evolutionary but also its developmental functions and consequences. Throughout, we suggest ways to further examine the negativity bias in infants and older children, and we make testable predictions that would help clarify the nature of the negativity bias during early development. KeywordsNegativity bias; Affective asymmetry; Social-cognitive development; Emotion; Social referencing Infants are exposed to a great deal of social information from birth, and their ability to use this information effectively is critical for development in many domains and for survival in general. This raises several important questions: do infants attend equally to all facets of this information, or do they attend to certain facets more than others? Do they, in addition, learn and remember particular kinds of information better than others? What evolutionary and developmental consequences do these ways of approaching the environment have? In this paper, we propose that infants display a negativity bias: that is, infants attend more to, are more influenced by, and use to a greater degree negative rather than positive facets of their environment. We propose possible ontogenetic pathways for the emergence of the negativity bias, and we argue that this bias serves important evolutionary and developmental functions.

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“…Several studies conducted with parents of TD children have shown that parents display more supportive reactions (e.g., helping to solve the problem that caused the child's distress) in daily life than non-supportive reactions (e.g., feeling embarrassed by an emotional display) (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996;McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007;Perry, Calkins, Nelson, Leerkes, & Marcovitch, 2012). During emotion-related conversations, mothers and fathers emphasize positive and negative emotions (e.g., Lagattuta & Wellman, 2002;Ontai & Thompson, 2002) and they explain (e.g., Denham & Auerbach, 1995;Garner, Dunsmore, & Southam-Gerrow, 2008) or ask questions about the causes and consequences of emotions (e.g., Denham & Auerbach, 1995;Lagattuta & Wellman, 2002;Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002). These studies suggest that parents who react in a supportive way and/or discuss emotions in the family may foster their children's emotional and social development, notably their Theory of Mind development (e.g., McElwain et al, 2007, Ruffman et al, 2002 or their emotional regulation (e.g., Perry et al, 2012;Shewark & Blandon, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion-Related Socialization Behaviours in Parents of Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Mazzone¹,

Nader-Grosbois²

2017

PSYCH

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Eisenberg, Cumberland and Spinrad (1998) defined Emotion-Related Socialization Behaviours (ERSBs) as parents' behaviours that tend to promote their children's emotional and social abilities. They distinguish three types of ERSBs in parents: their reactions to their children's emotions, their emotion-related conversations and their emotional expressiveness. The two present studies compare these reactions (Study 1) and conversations (Study 2) in parents of children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and parents of typically developing (TD) children. Moreover, by applying several linear regression analyses by the stepwise method, they examined the extent to which such ERSBs vary according to individual characteristics in children and parents. Study 1 included 39 mothers and 31 fathers of ASD children and 39 mothers and 31 fathers of TD children. In Study 2, 29 mothers and 15 fathers of ASD children and 29 mothers and 15 fathers of TD children participated. For the two studies, children were matched for gender and global developmental age. Parents' ERSBs, their openness to emotional processes and children's personality were assessed by means of questionnaires. Children's developmental age was assessed using the Differential Scales of Intellectual Efficiency. For each study, we considered mothers and fathers independently in our analyses, with a view to adapt parenting programmes for each parent if necessary. Results revealed that there are few differences between the two groups of parents in their ERSBs. Regression analyses showed that the variance in ERSBs in parents of ASD children was explained partially by their openness to emotional processes and by their children's personality. Our results suggest that, although parents of ASD children are good "socializers of emotions", intervention programs should take account of the fact that their ERSBs vary according to their own emotional abilities and their children's personality. These studies emphasize the importance of identifying which in-

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Differences in early parent-child conversations about negative versus positive emotions: Implications for the development of psychological understanding.

Cited by 178 publications

References 84 publications

Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development.

Emotion-Related Socialization Behaviours in Parents of Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

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