Culture, Emotion Socialization, and Children’s Executive Function

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

Abstract

Children’s executive function (EF), a set of neuro-cognitive abilities that govern individual’s cognitive processes and play an important role in children’s social adaptation and emotional control (e.g., Carlson, 2005), has obtained increasing interest from developmental researchers. There is emerging evidence that positive parenting, such as scaffolding and stimulation, high parental warmth and responsiveness as well as absence of hostility, are associated with children’s neuro-cognitive development (see review by Fay-Stammbach et al., 2014). Nevertheless, relations of specific aspects of parental socialization practices, particularly parental reactions to children’s lack of emotional self-control, with children’s EF are largely unexamined. More importantly, most studies have focused on children of European descent, and less is known about the relationship between parenting practices and children’s executive function in different cultural contexts, despite research demonstrating cultural differences in emotion socialization (e.g., Yang et al., 2020), as well as children’s EF competencies (e.g., Wang et al., 2016). In the current study, we investigated the relations among culture, maternal emotion socialization practices, and children’s executive function (EF) performance. Forty-eight Chinese (Mage = 60 months) children from Shanghai, China and 47 European American (Mage = 50 months) children from Boston, U.S. and their mothers participated in this study. Maternal emotion socialization was assessed using mothers’ reported reactions to children’s negative emotions by completing the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 2002). Child EF was assessed through two cognitive observational measures, the sun-moon Stroop task and the pencil tapping task. As expected, after controlling for child age, significant cultural differences in parental emotion socialization and child EF were found. Specifically, Chinese mothers adopted more punitive responses and less distress responses as compared to European American mothers. With age controlled, Chinese children scored higher on EF measures than did European American children. Interestingly, our findings revealed the moderating effect of culture on the negative relationship between non-supportive maternal emotion socialization reactions and children’s EF. Maternal punitive reactions and distress reactions were only negatively associated with European American children’s EF, but not with Chinese children’s EF. It is suggested that the cultural meaning of parental emotion socialization needs to be considered when investigating parental impact on the development of children’s EF.

Authors

• Stacey N Doan, Claremont Mckenna College
  Presenting Author

• Qingfang Song, Western Kentucky University
  Non-Presenting Author