Parent-Child Emotion Talk and Preschoolers’ Socioemotional Adjustment: A Study of Chinese American and Taiwanese Families

• In Event: Unfolding Emotion Socialization in Chinese-Heritage Families

Abstract

Emotion talk (ET) is an emotion socialization practice theorized to promote children’s socioemotional adjustment. Studies of European American families have found that parents engage in various types of ET with young children, such as helping children label emotions, making references to one’s feelings and desires, explaining the antecedents and consequences of emotion, asking questions about emotion, or providing guidance on how to regulate one’s emotion. Consistent with the theory that ET can promote children’s emotion knowledge and facilitate emotion regulation, parent-child ET has been associated with preschool- to school-age children’s better socioemotional adjustment, including higher social competence and fewer emotional and behavioral problems. Previous research has documented some cultural differences in parental ET, with parents of Chinese-heritage engaging in lower frequency and quality of ET compared to European American parents. Within a sample of Chinese American immigrant mothers, mothers’ Chinese orientation was negatively associated with their use of emotion questions and explanations, whereas mothers’ American orientation was positively associated with their use of positive emotion words and emotion explanations. This pattern suggests a dose-dependent relation between cultural contact and ET. Yet, the associations between ET and children’s socioemotional adjustment across diverse cultural contexts remain to be tested. In the present study, we examined parent-child ET in two subgroups of Chinese-heritage families: Chinese immigrant families in U.S. (CA; N = 38) and Taiwanese families in Taiwan (TW; N = 37). In a sample of 75 children (age = 3.2 to 7.4 years, 55% girls) and their parents (99% mothers), parents’ and children’s ET (emotion words, emotion questions and explanations, and quality of ET) were coded from a shared picture book reading task. Children’s socioemotional adjustment was measured by parent ratings and children’s emotion expressions were coded from an emotion-provoking social interaction task. We found that children’s ET, including use of emotion words and emotion reasoning, predicted children’s expression of sadness. A few cultural group differences were found: TW children used more negative emotion words and displayed a higher quality of ET than CA children, and TW parents used more emotion reasoning than CA parents. There were no cultural group differences in children’s socioemotional adjustment. Together, these results suggest the possibility that parent-child ET interactions might shape children’s emotion expression via promoting children’s ET. It also provided support for the socioemotional benefits of emotion talk for preschool-age children, while also revealing subcultural differences in Chinese-heritage families.

Authors

• Megan Chan, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Aya Williams, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yin-Ping Teresa Teng, Shih Chien University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author