Neural response to emotion related to narrative socialization of emotion in school-age girls

Emotion is processed on multiple dimensions, both internal and external, and these dimensions interact over time and development. Socialization of emotion via parent-child conversations is well known to shape emotion processes, with greater parental elaboration supporting children's emotion knowledge, understanding, and regulation. However, it is unclear how the effects of socialization may extend to neural processing of emotion, which in turn relates to emotion behaviors. In this research, 28 school-age girls and their parents discussed recent emotional experiences (positive and negative), and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as the children viewed emotionally evocative picture stimuli. Parent-child conversations were recorded and coded for parents' use of elaborative style. ERPs indicated a robust emotion response (late positive potential, LPP) that was observed across the scalp. Children of parents who used a greater elaborative style when discussing negative experiences had reduced LPPs at posterior sites. This relation was not observed for discussions of positive experiences despite similar use of elaborative style between event types. The results suggest that parental elaboration, during discussion of negative experience, is associated with reduced neurophysiological emotional reactivity in children. Thus, the impact of socialization of emotion extends beyond emotional behaviors to neural processing of emotion.