Parent-child talk about causes and emotions: the impact of socioeconomic status

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Research suggests that children’s tendency to talk about the causes of physical and emotional events increases across the toddler and preschool years (e.g., Bloom & Capatides, 1987; Brown & Dunn, 1991), and that parent talk fosters this ability. Maternal talk about the causes of emotions predicts children’s later emotion understanding (Brown & Dunn, 1996). Similarly, when interacting with museum exhibits, parents’ causal language predicts their children’s causal language (Callanan et al., 2020).
However, few studies have examined the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on children’s causal talk and its relationship to parent causal talk. Garner et al. (1997) found that low-income mothers’ explanations about the causes of emotions predicted their 4-year-olds’ emotional role-taking, but not their children’s use of emotion labels or emotion explanations. Alvarez et al. (2019) found that higher SES mothers made more references to emotions and non-emotional causes than lower SES mothers when interacting with their 30-month-old children, but this study did not examine the children’s causal or emotion talk. It thus remains unclear whether SES impacts children’s causal talk about physical or emotional events.
To address this gap in the literature, the present study examines causal and emotion talk in a socioeconomically diverse sample of parent-child dyads. Participants were 43 preschoolers (44 – 66 months, M = 57 months) and their parent. Dyads completed two interactive tasks on separate visits to the lab: a picture book activity and a model-building task. In the picture book activity, parents were given a wordless picture book that has previously been used to elicit parent talk about mental states (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006). Parents were told to talk about the pictures with their child like they would at home. In the model-building task, dyads were shown a model marble run and told to try to recreate it with their own set. Parents were encouraged to assist their child as they saw fit, but not to complete the task for them. For both tasks, dyads were left alone until they completed the activity or 10 minutes had elapsed.
All recorded interactions will be transcribed, and parent and child speech will be coded for causal statements and references to emotion. Each causal statement and emotion reference will be further coded for whether it was produced spontaneously, in response to an open-ended question (e.g., “What do you think is happening?”), or in response to a leading question (“Why is he sad?”). All data have been collected and transcription has been completed for 50% of the interactions. Coding is in progress and will be completed by April 2021.
Once coding is completed, we will analyze (1) the relative amounts of causal emotion talk, non-causal emotion talk, and non-emotion causal talk for both parents and children, (2) whether parents’ use of each type of talk predicts their children’s talk, and (3) whether any of these patterns vary as a function of child age or gender, parental education, or household income. Results will thus shed insight into the impact of SES on children’s causal and emotion understanding.

Group Authors

Miramontes, Maritza; Sullivan, James; Gabouer, Allison; Scott, Rose

Authors

• Maritza Miramontes, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• James Z Sullivan, University of California - Merced
  Non-Presenting Author

• Allison Gabouer, University of California, Merced
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rose M Scott, University of California - Merced
  Non-Presenting Author