Creation of a Short-Form and Brief Short-Form Version of The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale

The current study evaluated the theoretical alignment between the Coping with Children's Negative Emotion Scale (CCNES), a commonly used measure to asses parent emotion socialization, and Gottman, Katz and Hooven’s meta-emotion theory. Further, we created an 18-item short-form (3 emotion coaching subscales, 3 emotion dismissing subscales), and 6-item brief short-form (emotion coaching subscale and emotion dismissing subscale) with acceptable psychometric properties

Culture shapes preschoolers’ emotion recognition but not emotion comprehension: a cross-cultural study in Germany and Singapore

Contemporary approaches suggest that emotions are shaped by culture. Children growing up in different cultures experience culture-specific emotion socialization practices. As a result, children growing up in Western societies (e.g., US or UK) rely on explicit, semantic information, whereas children from East Asian cultures (e.g., China or Japan) are more sensitive towards implicit, contextual cues when confronted with others’ emotions. The aim of the present study was to investigate two aspects of preschoolers’ emotion understanding (emotion recognition and emotion comprehension) in a cross-cultural setting. To this end, Singaporean and German preschoolers were tested with an emotion recognition task employing European-American and East Asian child’s faces and the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons et al., 2004). In total, 129 German and Singaporean preschoolers (mean age 5.34 years) participated. Results indicate that preschoolers were able to recognize emotions of child’s faces above chance level. In line with previous findings, Singaporean preschoolers were more accurate in recognizing emotions from facial stimuli compared to German preschoolers. Accordingly, Singaporean preschoolers outperformed German preschoolers in the Recognition component of the TEC. The overall performance in TEC did not differ between the two samples. Findings of this study provide further evidence that emotion understanding is culturally shaped in accordance with culture-specific emotion socialization practices.

Cultural Orientation, Parental Emotion Socialization, and Adolescents’ Socio-Emotional Functioning Across Three Asian Cultures: India, China, and Singapore

Limited research has examined parental emotion socialization across Asian cultural contexts. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of family change and self-construal, this study examined cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence, parental emotion socialization processes, and their relations with adolescents’ psychological adjustment across three Asian cultural contexts—rural families in South India, suburban families in China, and families in Singapore. Participants included 300 Indian adolescents ( Mage = 15.58 years; 57.3% male) and their parents, 310 Chinese adolescents ( Mage = 13.04 years; 46.3% female) and their parents, and 241 Singaporean adolescents ( Mage = 14.44 years; 48.3% female) and their parents. Both adolescents and parents completed self-report measures of cultural orientation and emotion socialization, and adolescents completed a measure of their psychological adjustment. We first established construct validation for two emotion socialization processes and found that the factor structure for parental reactions varied across Asian contexts and parent versus adolescent reports, while the factor structure for parental emotion expressivity varied only across informants. Second, we tested whether the two parental emotion socialization processes mediated the association between cultural orientation toward independence-interdependence and adolescent behavior problems, and found differential relations across the three Asian contexts. Our data supported the model of family change and showed that across the Asian societies, the variations in independence-interdependence orientation provide different models of parental emotion socialization with nuances in meaning and function, as revealed by the construct validation of parental reactions and emotional expressivity and their implications for adolescents’ socio-emotional functioning.

Trauma-Focused Tuning in to Kids: Evaluation in a Clinical Service

This study evaluated the Tuning in to Kids (TIK) parenting program delivered in a clinical setting with 77 parents and caregivers (hereafter referred to as “parents”) of children who had experienced complex trauma. The TIK program targets parent emotion socialization to improve children’s emotional and behavioral functioning. The study utilized a single-group design with pre- and post-intervention measures. Seventy-seven parents of children (aged 3–15 years) who had experienced complex trauma completed a ten-week version of the Trauma-Focused Tuning in to Kids program (TF-TIK). Measures examined parent reports of: emotion socialization; parent-child relationship; parent mental health; children’s emotional and behavioral functioning. Parents reported significantly improved emotion socialization, parent-child relationship, parent mental health, as well as child emotion regulation and behavior. This study provides initial support for the use of the TF-TIK parenting program in a clinical setting with parents of children who have experienced complex trauma in order to prevent or reduce problems.

Associations between emotional scaffolding, classroom quality and dialectical thinking support in kindergarten

Emotional scaffolding by the teachers of kindergarten children facilitates children's emotional well-being and contributes to their achievements in school. Our aim was to analyze the association between emotional scaffolding, dialectical thinking support and classroom quality. We used the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R), Dialectical Thinking Support (DTS) scale and Emotion Socialization Observation Scale (ESOS). The study involved 22 kindergarten groups attended by 6-7-year-old children and their educators who have worked with these children for several years. The actions of teachers aimed at emotional expressiveness modeling and teaching about emotions are positively associated with high-classroom and dialectical thinking support. We revealed for the first time associations between dialectical thinking support and emotional scaffolding in children. This suggests that the discussion of opposites and contradictions in objects and situations in the classroom environment and the study of them in the process of change is positively associated with emotion socialization. Keywords: dialectical thinking; teaching about emotions; emotional scaffolding; preschoolers; quality of educational environment