Poster #150 - Maternal Emotion Coaching and Child Negative Emotionality as Predictors of Emotion Regulation in Korean Children

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of maternal emotion coaching on child emotion regulation. Children who can regulate their emotion adequately tend to be happier, more socially competent and have better academic achievement than those who cannot regulate their emotion well (Denham et al., 2003; Go & Kim, 2014; Johnson, 2016). Ability to regulate one’s emotion in childhood is known to be relevant both to child temperament and parenting practice. Children with high negative emotionality are inclined to show depressive symptoms and have more difficulties in using emotion regulation strategies (Blair, Denham, Kochanoff, & Whipple, 2004; Compas, Connor-Smith, & Jaser, 2004). On the other hand, emotion coached children are more likely to be aware of their own emotion accurately and use adaptive emotion regulation strategies (Bae & Park, 2015; Warren, 2008). Therefore, we examined the effects of maternal emotion coaching on child emotion regulation considering negative emotionality of the child. A sample of 9- to 10-year-old children and their mothers recruited in Seoul, Korea. Participants were 223 mother-child dyads (113 daughters, 110 sons; M child age 9.6 years; M mother age 42.27). Dyads completed questionnaires, respectively: mothers reported emotion coaching behaviors with the Maternal Emotion Coaching Questionnaires (Lim, Kang, & Song, 2018) and children completed the Korean version of Emotionality, Activity, Sociability Scale (Moon, 2010) and the Emotion Intelligence Test (Kwak, 1997). Pearson’s correlation analyses indicated that child emotion regulation was inversely associated with negative emotionality (r = -.24, p < .001), but positively associated with maternal emotion coaching (r = .16, p < .05). Specifically, child emotion regulation was significantly linked to maternal acceptance of child emotion (r = .16, p < .05), empathy (r = .14, p < .05), and guiding how to solve emotion relevant problems (r = .14, p < .05). Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that maternal emotion coaching (β = .15, p < .05) accounted for significant variance in child emotion regulation even after controlling for the effects of child gender (β = .16, p < .05) and negative emotionality (β = -.26, p < .001). That is, maternal emotion coaching was a unique contributor for predicting child emotion regulation beyond child factors like gender and temperament. Findings suggest that an intervention focused on maternal emotion coaching may prove beneficial for increasing emotion regulation of children with negative emotionality.

Authors

• JungHa Lim, Korea University
  Presenting Author

• Hyun Jee Kang, Korea University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jieun Song, Korea University
  Non-Presenting Author