Parental communication about emotional contexts: Differences across discrete categories of emotion

Abstract

Parent socialization of emotion is critical for children's emotional development. One mechanism through which parents socialize emotional understanding is in their conversations about emotions with their children. Previous research has investigated parent-child discourse about emotions differing by positive and negative valence. This study examined how parents communicated about and differentially emphasized elements of discrete emotion contexts (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, joy).Caregivers described images of emotional contexts to their 18-monthold or 24-month-old infant. Findings indicated that parents talked more about sadness images than joy images. Furthermore, parents mentioned the emoter more in anger and sadness contexts and talked about the referent more in disgust, fear, and joy contexts. Parents also posed more questions to female than male infants, particularly when discussing anger, sadness, and disgust images. No age differences were observed for any measure. These findings provide new insight into how parents talk about and highlight aspects of discrete emotional contexts. K E Y W O R D Semotion, parent communication, socialization

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