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Updated: Sep 17, 2025
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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
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Maternal Emotion Coaching and Child Emotion Regulation: Within-Interaction Sequences in Early Childhood
Danhua Zhu1, Fantasy T Lozada2, Cynthia L Smith3
1University of California, CA Irvine, 9269 USA.
Affective Science
|July 3, 2025
Summary
Maternal emotion coaching influences child emotion regulation. At age 3, interactions were reciprocal for positive and negative emotions, but by age 4, only positive emotion coaching by mothers predicted child compliance and engagement.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Emotion socialization is a complex, ongoing process within parent-child interactions.
- Understanding the transactional nature of emotion socialization in early childhood is crucial for child development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the sequential contingencies between maternal emotion coaching and child emotion regulation at ages 3 and 4 years.
- To differentiate the roles of positive and negative emotion socialization in early childhood.
Main Methods:
- Lag-sequential analysis of mother-child dyads (N=208 at age 3, N=227 at age 4) during a laboratory task.
- Videorecorded interactions coded for maternal emotion coaching (positive and negative) and child emotion regulation (compliance, engagement, low frustration) at 30-second intervals.
Main Results:
- At age 3, reciprocal sequences were observed: maternal positive emotion coaching predicted child compliance, and vice versa; maternal negative emotion coaching predicted child frustration, and vice versa.
- At age 4, only parent-driven sequences emerged: maternal positive emotion coaching predicted child compliance and engagement.
Conclusions:
- The findings highlight the dynamic and transactional nature of emotion socialization.
- Positive and negative emotions serve distinct functions in early childhood emotion regulation development.
- Maternal emotion coaching strategies evolve, showing bidirectional influence at age 3 and primarily parent-driven influence by age 4.
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