Emotion Talk During Mother-Child Reminiscing and Book Sharing and Children’s Socioemotional Competence

• In Event: 1-148 - International Perspectives on Sociocognitive and Socioemotive Mechanisms in Prosocial Development

Integrative Statement

Motivation:
Parental emotion talk is important for the development of socio-emotional competencies (Dunn, Brown, & Beardsalt, 1991; Denham, Zoller, & Couchoud, 1994). Parents vary in the frequency and complexity of their emotion talk, and culture plays a special role on this variability (e.g., Wang & Fivush, 2005). This study investigated mother-child emotion talk across two contexts that differ in their underlying cultural model: urban families from Costa Rica representing the model of autonomy-relatedness, and urban families from Germany, representing the model of autonomy.
We investigated cultural differences in mother-child emotion talk during reminiscing and book sharing, and whether these differences would reflect the contexts’ underlying cultural models. We also explored the culture-specific relations of mother-child emotion talk and children’s socio-emotional competency.

Method:
The sample included 52 dyads. Costa Rican (n = 26) and German mothers (n = 26) discussed a negative past event and read a book with their four-year olds. Conversations were coded for amount, complexity and agency of emotion talk. Children’s socio-emotional competency was assessed with the Challenging Situation Task (Denham, Bouril, & Belouad, 1994), where they provided strategies on how to solve hypothetical peer-provocation situations. Answers were coded for competency.

Results:
Complexity of emotion talk: Across reminiscing and book sharing, Costa Rican mothers talked more about emotions (M = 17.58, SD = 15.20) than German mothers (M = 12.00, SD = 4.85), F(1,50) = 3.17, p = .081, ηp² = .06, t(51) = 1.78, p = .09. However, Costa Rican and German dyads did not differ in the complexity of their emotion talk.

Agency of emotion talk: A significant Agency x Cultural Context interaction was found, Wilks’ λ =.88, F(2, 49) = 3.36, p = .043, ηp² = .12. Costa Rican and German mothers referred to child-agency emotions and unspecific-agency emotions similarly often (ps > .41), but Costa Rican mothers referred to social-agency emotions more often than German mothers (Wilks’ λ =.88, F(2, 49) = 3.36, p = .043, ηp² = .12) (Table 1). This difference was only marginally significant, t(50) = 1.85, p = .070.

Emotion talk and children’s socio-emotional competencies: For the Costa Rican sample, total emotion talk by mothers (r = -.45, p = .025) as well as children (r = -.41, p = .042) during reminiscing was negatively correlated with children’s socio-emotional competency. No significant correlations were observed in the German sample.

Conclusions:
Results reflected that Costa Rican mothers value relatedness more than German mothers, and therefore they talked more about the others as the agents of emotions. The negative link between emotion talk and children’s socioemotional competency in the Costa Rican sample might be explained by the fact that preschool education in Costa Rica starts at the age of four, and children in our sample were just experiencing the transition from home to school. Mothers in our sample with children who had low levels of socio-emotional competency might be making the extra effort to teach their children to control their own emotions and to understand the emotions of others during this transition.

Authors

• Ana M. Carmiol, University of Costa Rica
  Presenting Author

• Lisa Schröder, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal
  Non-Presenting Author