Poster #64 - Parents’ Use of Third-Person Speech Predicts Parent and Child Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Parents often refer to themselves as “Mommy” or “Daddy” when talking to their children. Why do they do this? One possibility is that the use of stable names, as opposed to pronouns, helps young children understand parents’ speech (Moyer et al., 2014). In this study, we explored whether the use of third-person speech might also relate to self-regulation in parents and their children. Referring to oneself by name, a form of linguistic distancing, can help people take a step back from negative situations, evaluate them from an outsider’s perspective, and react more rationally (Kross & Ayduk, 2011). In one study, mothers of insecurely attached children who used third-person speech showed lower levels of negative affect during a stressful laboratory clean-up task with their children (Hinckley et al., 2020). Yet, questions remain as to how third-person speech relates to parents’ emotion regulation in everyday settings, parenting behaviors, and children’s self-regulation.

Method: Participants were 91 parents (Mage = 34.5; 51 mothers, 40 fathers) of 2-4-year-old children (M = 45.5 months, SD = 9.0; 48 girls, 43 boys) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Parents recalled a recent frustrating experience with their child, then rated a series of questions (on a scale of 1-7) regarding their language use (i.e., how often they referred to themselves in the third-person as “Mommy” or “Daddy”), emotional reactivity, and thoughts (i.e., reconstrual, ability to take their child’s perspective, self-efficacy, blame, suppression, and desire to give in to their child) during the event. They also reported on their child’s behaviors and emotional reactivity in the moment, as well as their general emotion regulation skills (EERBQ: Perry & Dollar, 2021).

Results and Discussion: On average, parents occasionally referred to themselves as “Mommy” or “Daddy” during the frustrating event (M = 4.92, SD = 2.11). Frequency of third-person speech was marginally negatively correlated with parents’ emotional reactivity. Moreover, parents who used more third-person speech reconstrued the situation in positive ways, felt capable of handling it, saw their child’s perspective, and made concessions to help their child feel less upset. These results conceptually replicate previous research linking linguistic distancing to better emotion regulation and further connect it to parent-child interactions. Although language use was not related to children’s emotional reactivity or behavior during the recalled event, parents who used third-person language reported that their children are generally less emotionally reactive to upsetting situations. Although third-person language does not appear to calm children in the moment, parents who use this technique have better emotion regulation and a more adaptive approach to stressful interactions that could benefit their children’s regulatory abilities over time. Of course, further experimental research is needed to establish the direction of the relations seen here. Overall, our results add to a growing body of research linking linguistic distancing to emotion regulation skills and, if supported by future experiments, could inform positive parenting practices.

Authors

• Rachel E White, Hamilton College
  Presenting Author

• Katherine Bruno, Hamilton College

• Andrew Harrell

• Paige McKenzie