The Association between Maternal Emotion Socialization, Child Temperament, and Emotion Understanding

Emotion understanding is an important part of social development in children. Research has shown that parent emotion socialization behaviours can affect the development of child emotion understanding. The goal of this study was to examine the interplay between behaviourally inhibited temperament (BI), and parent socialization behaviours in predicting emotion understanding in preschoolers. Ninety-one children were assessed for BI and emotion understanding using parent report and behavioural tasks. Observations of mother-child discussions were coded for parental emotion coaching and use of emotion words. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both BI and use of negative emotion words predicted child emotion understanding; however, an interaction between these predictor variables was not significant. BI and negative emotion words were uniquely predictive of social understanding for non-stereotypical but not stereotypical emotions. Finally, bivariate analyses revealed some notable gender differences in the associations amongst these variables. These results and their implications for future research are discussed.