We examined the relations between the referent of parents and preschoolers’ mental state talk during a collaborative puzzle‐solving task (
Children’s ability to engage in pretend play is important for healthy development. However, relative to cognitive play features, only a handful of studies have examined the influence of affect expression in pretend play on child development. This study evaluated prospective relations of 250 preschoolers’ (
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10455199
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social Development
- Volume:
- 29
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0961-205X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 995-1013
- Size(s):
- p. 995-1013
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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N = 146 dyads;n = 81 3‐year‐olds,n = 65 4‐year‐olds). The results showed that parents’ references to their own knowledge and beliefs (self‐referent cognitive talk), and references to their child’s knowledge and beliefs (child‐referent cognitive talk) were both related to children’s (primarily self‐referent) cognitive talk. We then tested whether any of the observed relations could be explained by the presence of conflicting perspectives within the collaborative interaction. Mediational analyses revealed that conflicting perspectives mediated the positive relation between parents’ production of self‐referent cognitive talk and child cognitive talk. By contrast, the positive relation between parents’ production of child‐referent cognitive talk and child cognitive talk did not depend on the presence of this type of conflict. These findings highlight an important mechanism through which parents’ references to their own mind might promote children’s developing mental state talk in collaborative contexts. -
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Abstract Introduction Building on prior evidence that prosocial behavior is related to the regulation of personal distress in difficult situations, and given that physiological regulation is a central contributor to effective emotion regulation, this investigation evaluated whether and how children's autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during emotion challenges influenced later expressions of prosocial behavior.
Methods The current study utilized a diverse sample of school‐aged children (
N = 169; 47.9% female; 47.3% Latinx) to evaluate relations between children's parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) and sympathetic (i.e., pre‐ejection period; PEP) reactivity in response to each of three film‐elicited emotion challenges (i.e., sadness, happiness, and fear) at age 7 and both observed and parent‐reported prosocial behavior one year later.Results Children's parasympathetic reactivity to a film eliciting sadness evidenced a nonlinear relation with later prosocial sharing such that children who evidenced either RSA withdrawal or augmentation in response to the sad emotion challenge engaged in higher levels of prosocial behavior than children who evidenced relatively low or absent reactivity. Parasympathetic reactivity to films eliciting happiness or fear was not significantly related to later prosocial behavior. Likewise, children's sympathetic reactivity in response to the emotion challenges did not significantly predict later prosocial behavior.
Conclusions These findings provide preliminary support for a nonlinear association between children's parasympathetic emotion reactivity and later prosocial behavior, and suggest that children's ANS regulation in sad emotion contexts may be particularly important for understanding prosocial development.
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Abstract Longstanding theories of emotion socialization postulate that caregiver emotional and behavioral reactions to a child's emotions together shape the child's emotion displays over time. Despite the notable importance of positive valence system function, the majority of research on caregiver emotion socialization focuses on negative valence system emotions. In the current project, we leveraged a relatively large cross‐sectional study of caregivers (
N = 234; 93.59% White) of preschool aged children to investigate whether and to what degree, caregiver (1) emotional experiences, or (2) external behaviors, in the context of preschoolers’ positive emotion displays in caregiver–child interactions, are associated with children's general positive affect tendencies. Results indicated that, in the context of everyday caregiver–child interactions, caregiver‐reported positively valenced emotions but not approach behaviors were positively associated with child general positive affect tendencies. However, when examining specific caregiver behaviors in response to everyday child positive emotion displays, caregiver report of narrating the child's emotion and joining in the emotion with their child was positively associated with child general positive affect tendencies. Together, these results suggest that in everyday caregiver–child interactions, caregivers’ emotional experiences and attunement with the child play a role in shaping preschoolers’ overall tendencies toward positive affect. -
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Abstract From a biobehavioral framework, mother–child physiological and behavioral coordination are interdependent processes that contribute to children's socioemotional development. Little is known, however, about the temporal pattern of real‐time physiological coordination or its associations with global levels of mother–child behavioral coordination. We addressed these gaps using data from 110 mothers and their preschool‐aged children (56 girls,
M age = 53.63 months,SD = 7.74) across two play tasks (i.e., puzzle, pretend play). Using indices of maternal and child parasympathetic response (i.e., changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) across 15‐s epochs, we tested the extent to which within‐dyad physiological coordination was contingent on mutually responsive orientation (MRO; a global composite of behavioral coordination and shared positive affect assessed via observer ratings across each play task). Results from a series of two‐level coupled autoregressive models indicated that MRO moderated mother–lead RSA coordination, and this pattern emerged across both play tasks. Controlling for stability of within‐person RSA changes, increases in maternal RSA at timet – 1 predicted increases in children's RSA at timet , but only for dyads averaging higher MRO during play. No interactions of MRO emerged for child–lead RSA coordination. Findings highlight the importance of dyadic behavioral processes for mother–child physiological coordination. -
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Familial and nonfamilial relations play prominent roles in fostering youths’ prosocial tendencies. The present study examined the direct and indirect relations among family conflict, parental and peer acceptance, deviant peer affiliation, and prosocial tendencies. Participants included 306 (53.8% female,
M age = 15.50,SD N = 206, 68.0%; average time in United States = 10 years) and identified as a Mexican heritage group member (N = 248, 81.0%). Findings differed by nativity as parental acceptance predicted prosocial tendencies for U.S. Latinos/as born outside the United States and peers were significant predictors of prosocial tendencies for U.S.‐born Latino/as.
