1. Longitudinal Effects of Mothers’ Encouragement and Discouragement of Positive Emotions on Children’s Task Behavior
Deon Brown, Julie C. Dunsmore, Erika Hernandez, Rachel L. Miller-Slough, Cynthia L. Smith & Martha Ann Bell
INTRODUCTION
ANALYSES
RESULTS
Examination of variable distributions showed floor effects for maternal encouragement and discouragement of negative emotions on both puzzle and etch-a-sketch tasks at age 4 years. Therefore, these variables were not included in further analyses.
Correlations with the full sample showed an association between mothers’ encouragement of positive emotions during the etch-a-sketch at 4 years and children’s engagement in the marble maze at 6 years, r = .63, p = .004.
We conducted bivariate correlations separately by child sex (see Table 1). Fisher’s r to z transformation was used to test whether differences between correlations for boys compared with girls were significant. For the association of maternal discouragement of positive emotion on the etch-a-sketch with children’s non-compliance, a significant difference between girls and boys was found, z = 2.08, p = .038, A regression was then conducted to test this moderation effect. See Figure 1.
Emotion coaching is a parenting style that validates children’s emotional experience and encourages children’s appropriate expression of emotions (Gottman, Katz & Hooven, 1996).
Children of parents who coach emotions tend to have fewer behavior problems and stronger social skills (Eisenberg et al., 1998).
Boys show more difficulty than girls in early school adjustment (Ponitz, Rimm-Kaufman, Brock & Nathanson, 2009), and demonstrate higher arousal and lower inhibitory control than girls (Brody, 1999).
The premise of the present study is that maternal emotion coaching may help children engage in school-related tasks in a way that promotes school adjustment and gender may affect the relationship between maternal emotion coaching and children’s later task behavior.
Floor effects were found for mothers’ encouragement and discouragement of negative emotions
No association of mothers’ encouragement and discouragement of positive emotions at age 4 years with children’s frustration during tasks at age 6 years
Mothers’ encouragement of positive emotion during the etch-a-sketch task at age 4 years was associated with both girls’ and boys’ engagement with the marble maze task at age 6 years
Maternal discouragement of positive emotion during the etch-a-sketch task at age 4 years was related to girls’ lower non-compliance at age 6 years and boys’ greater non-compliance at age 6 years
Table 1. Correlations among study variables within child gender
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Variables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
1 Mother enc. of pos. emotions – puzzle – 4 years --
.27
.68†
.51
-.34
.44
.19
2 Mother disc. of pos. emotions – puzzle – 4 years
-.11
.48
-.46
.22
3 Mother enc. of pos. emotions – etch-a-sketch – 4 years
.02
.09
-.33
.62
4 Mother disc. of pos. emotions – etch-a-sketch – 4 years
-.15
-.25
.11
.59
5 Child frustration – 6 years
.23
.25
-.26
.28
-.62†
6 Child engagement – 6 years
.12
.10
.73*
.01
-.44
-.39
7 Child non-compliance – 6 years
.05
.29
-.47
.40
Note: †p<.10, *p<.05. Boys above the diagonal, girls below the diagonal. Enc = encouragement, disc = discouragement, pos = positive, neg = negative.
METHOD
Larger sample size
Follow children into early adolescence
Examine fathers’ emotion coaching
Explore whether there are gender differences in child behaviors that elicit maternal encouragement and discouragement of positive and negative emotions
Investigate the following outcomes: behavior problems, social skills, and academic achievement in the school context
Twenty-one mother-child dyads (9 boys, 12 girls)
81% Caucasian, 9.5% Black or African American, 4.8% either multiracial, and 4.8% other
38.1% completed high school, 33.3% completed college, 19% attended graduate school, 4.8% completed technical school, and 4.8% did not complete high school
Tasks
etch-a-sketch and puzzle at 4 years
labyrinth marble maze at 6 years
Behaviors coded:
Mothers’ encouragement and discouragement of children’s positive and negative emotions during the etch-a-sketch and puzzle tasks at 4 years (ICCs = )
Children’s non-compliance, frustration, and engagement with the marble maze task at 6 years (ICCs > .80).
CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that during school-related tasks, mothers may attend more to preschool-age children’s positive emotions than their negative emotions
Findings support benefits of mothers’ encouragement of positive emotion for children’s later task engagement.
Findings also suggest child gender differences in the relation of mothers’ discouragement of positive emotion to later non-compliance.
Attending to children’s emotions during school-related tasks may help foster children’s performance as well as their socioemotional development
Figure 1. Child gender moderated effects of maternal discouragement of positive emotion at age 4 years on children’s non-compliance at age 6 years.
HYPOTHESES
Mothers’ greater encouragement of emotion during the tasks at age 4 years will predict children’s lower non-compliance and frustration and higher engagement at age 6 years.
Mothers’ discouragement of emotion at age 4 years will predict children’s higher non-compliance and frustration and lower engagement at age 6 years.
We gratefully acknowledge the Virginia Tech CAP Lab and the Children’s Emotions Lab. Funding for coding maternal emotion coaching was provided by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Society, Culture, & Environment. Funding for the larger study was provided by R01 HD049878, Martha Ann Bell, PI.
Omnibus F (3, 15) = 3.08, p = .059, R2 = .38; interaction t (15) = -2.45, p = .027
Social Development Lab
Presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, Tampa, FL, November 2016