Relationship between Mother-Child Emotion Talk, and Emotional Competence among Pakistani Preschoolers

Abstract

Background. The present study investigated the link between mother-child emotion talk, emotional competence (i.e., emotion understanding and emotion regulation) among preschool children. The role of demographic variables including age and number of siblings (older and younger) was also investigated for emotion talk and emotional competence.

Method. The sample comprised of 30 preschoolers (48 to 71 months; M = 60.13, SD = 7.56) and their mothers. Children completed emotion understanding; affective knowledge test (AKT) (Denham, 1986), and emotion regulation tasks; locked box task (Goldsmith et al., 1999). Mother-child dyads also engaged in an autobiographical recall task (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998; Neal 2014) discussing two past events which was recorded and coded for emotion labels and explanations using Mind-Mindedness Coding Manual (Meins & Fernyhough, 2015).

Results and discussion. Regression analyses indicated that mother emotion talk significantly predicted children emotion talk (? = .38) and use of explanations by children predicted emotion understanding (? = .43). Number of siblings significantly positively predicted emotion understanding (? = .47), mother emotion talk (? = .46) and dyadic emotion talk (? = .46) and negatively predicted venting coping strategies (? = -.41) of emotion regulation. Independent samples t-tests showed that older preschoolers have significant higher emotion understanding and used more emotion labels, whereas younger preschoolers used more negative emotion regulation strategies (avoidance and venting).

Conclusion. These findings highlight the importance of maternal use of emotion language and sibling context in enhancing children’s emotional competence.