Mother and Child Facial Expression Labeling Skill Relates to Mutual Responsiveness During Emotional Conversations

Abstract

The capacity to engage with one's child in a reciprocally responsive way is an important element of successful and rewarding parent-child conversations, which are common contexts for emotion socialization. The degree to which a parent-child dyad shows a mutually responsive orientation presumably depends on both individuals' socioemotional skills. For example, one or both members of a dyad needs to be able to accurately interpret and respond to the other's nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, to facilitate mutually responsive interactions. Little research, however, has examined whether and how mother and/or child facial expression decoding skill relates to dyads' emotional mutuality during conversations. We thus examined associations between both mother and child facial expression decoding skill and observed emotional mutuality during parentpreschooler conversations about happy child memories. Results lend support to our hypotheses by suggesting that both mother and child capacities to read others' emotional cues make distinct contributions to parent-child emotional mutuality in the context of reminiscing conversations. Specifically, mothers' accurate decoding of child facial expressions predicted maternal displays of positive affect and interest, while children's accurate decoding of adult facial expressions predicted dyadic displays of mutual enjoyment. Contrary to our hypotheses, however, parent/child facial expression decoding skills did not interact to predict observed mutual responsiveness. These findings underscore the importance of attending to both parent and child contributions to successful dyadic interactions that facilitate effective emotion socialization.

The role of the differential outcomes procedure and schizotypy in the recognition of dynamic facial expressions of emotions

“…Being able to correctly decode facial expressions is essential for building successful relationships and for adaptative social functioning 1 – 3 since these expressions are one of the most common ways of communicating the emotional state of an individual. It is noteworthy that this ability has also been associated with important features, such as parenting 4 , 5 , quality of life 6 , work functioning, and independent living in people with mental illness 7 . Therefore, fostering an accurate emotional facial expression recognition would thus be desirable, and methods that may ameliorate the possible deficits in this ability are worth investigating.…”