Poster #90 - Maternal Emotion Coaching and Young Children’s Peer Play Competence: Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Social competence in preschool is largely manifested in the context of peer play. The capacity to regulate one’s emotions from early childhood is crucial for the development of social competence and it can be learned through appropriate guidance of parents, i.e. emotion coaching. Emotion coaching is a specific parenting technique that helps children understand their feelings and learn how to regulate them. Thus, we aimed to examine the link between maternal emotion coaching and young children’s peer play competence mediated by child emotion regulation. A total of 316 children (50.3% boys), aged 3 to 5 years, participated with their mothers (80% aged from 35 to 45). They were recruited from daycare centers in the metropolitan area of South Korea. Maternal emotion coaching was assessed by self-report using the Materna Emotion Coaching Questionnaire. The MECQ (Lim et al., 2022) has 29 items that ask mothers to rate how they usually think and respond to a child's emotional experiences. The capacity for emotion regulation (17 items; Lee, 1997) and peer play behaviors (30 items; Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale, Fantuzzo et al. 1998) were evaluated by teacher-report. Child behaviors during peer play were evaluated by three factors including positive play interactions, play disruption, and play disconnection. Correlation analyses showed that better maternal emotion coaching was associated with child greater capacity for emotion regulation (r = .30, p < .01), more positive peer interactions (r = .24, p < .01), less disruption (r = -.23, p < .01), and less disconnection (r = -.27, p < .01) during peer play. Mediating effects were tested using the PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). Mediation analyses indicated that maternal emotion coaching was indirectly linked to positive peer interactions and disruption during peer play via child emotion regulation controlling for child gender. Moreover, maternal emotion coaching was linked to peer play disconnection directly and indirectly through child emotion regulation. The indirect effects of maternal emotion coaching on varied peer play behaviors were also significant with the bootstrap approach. These findings provide evidence that supports the effects of maternal emotion coaching and child emotion regulation in the development of social competence. Distinct effects of maternal emotion coaching in the various behaviors in the peer play context are discussed.

Authors

• Jungha Lim, Korea University

• Sungmin Park, Korea University Graduate School
  Presenting Author

• Sung Yoon Choi, Graduate School of Korea University

• Yejee Jeong, Korea University