New version of the emotion socialization scale with the positive emotion of overjoy: initial validation evidence with Portuguese adolescents

Abstract There are few studies on parental socialization of positive emotions in adolescents and few instruments that measure these parental reactions. Therefore, we developed a new version of the Emotion Socialization Scale (ESS) for the positive emotion of overjoy. We further provided some evidence of validity and reliability of the Portuguese ESS, featuring overjoy, fear, anger, and sadness. Adolescents (N = 418) answered questionnaires on maternal emotion socialization and maternal rearing practices. Confirmatory factor analysis achieved good (reward, neglect, override, magnify) to acceptable (punish) levels of fit, and scales had good levels of internal consistency, except for punish (all emotions) and neglect (overjoy). Association with maternal rearing practices supported the adaptive role of reward and magnify and the less adaptive role of punish, override, neglect of positive emotion, with some exceptions. This investigation demonstrated the importance of assessing parents' reactions to adolescents' positive emotion as these may be important indicators of the parent-adolescent relationship quality.

Joint attention at 10 months of age in infant-mother dyads: contrasting free toy-play with semi-structured toy-play.

Fifty-two 10-month-olds and their mothers were observed in free toy-play and semi-structured toy-play for assessing joint attention capabilities. Mothers exhibited more bids for joint attention during semi-structured toy-play. Infants' response to maternal behaviors and their bids for initiating joint attention were higher during free toy-play.

Child and mother mental-state talk in shared pretense as predictors of children's social symbolic play abilities at age 3.

UNLABELLED: This study investigated relations between mother and child (N=49) mental-state talk during shared pretense and children's social symbolic play at age 3. Social symbolic play was not related to mothers' mental-state talk. In contrast, children's own use of desire-state talk in shared pretense was a better predictor of social symbolic play than their general use of mental-state talk, even after accounting for general verbal ability as well as mothers' use of desires terms. CONCLUSION: These results highlight for the first time a link between children's references to desires and their performance on social symbolic play at age 3 years - a social cognitive ability thought to precede theory of mind.

Individual and relational contributions to parallel and joint attention in infancy.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the contributions of maternal bids for joint attention, relationship quality, and infant characteristics, to individual differences in infants' parallel and joint attention. METHOD: Fifty-two 10-month-olds and their mothers were assessed in order to investigate concurrent predictors of infant parallel attention, responding to joint attention, and initiating joint attention. RESULTS: Parallel attention was predicted by infants' higher mental development, low expression of negative emotionality, and maternal entertaining behaviors. Responding to joint attention was marginally predicted by total maternal bids for joint attention. Initiating joint attention was predicted by the infants' low expression of negative emotionality, as well as marginally predicted by fewer maternal teaching behaviors. CONCLUSION: These results further the understanding of the factors influencing infant parallel as well as joint attention.