Emotion socialization profiles in military parents: Associations with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Military families face many difficulties, including a parent deploying to a warzone and the subsequent risk of returning with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms of PTSD are associated with parenting difficulties; however, little is known about how PTSD symptoms may be associated with emotion socialization (ES), a set of processes crucial to children's emotional well-being. This project investigated observed ES behaviors in deployed and non-deployed parents in a sample of 224 predominantly White, non-Hispanic National Guard/Reserve (NG/R) families with deployed fathers, non-deployed mothers, and a child between the ages of 4 and 13. Parents completed self-report questionnaires and families engaged in videotaped parent-child discussions, which were coded for three types of ES behaviors. Latent profile analyses of the coded behaviors identified five profiles of parental ES: Balanced/Supportive, Balanced/Limited Expression, Unsupportive/Distressed, Unsupportive/Positive, and Involved/Emotive/Angry. Multinomial logistic regressions of each parent's profile membership on fathers' PTSD symptoms revealed no significant associations, while additional analyses including additional family factors revealed that greater father PTSD symptoms were associated with a greater likelihood of mothers being in the Balanced/Supportive profile compared to the Balanced/Limited Expression profile, particularly when children displayed average to low levels of emotion during discussion tasks. No other significant associations with PTSD symptoms were detected. Overall, in contrast to the hypotheses, the majority of these findings indicated that PTSD symptoms did not play a significant role in parental ES behaviors.

Teacher-Child Racial Congruence and Young Children's Preschool Adjustment.

The purpose of this study was to explore how adjusted preschoolers were to preschool when their teachers were either racially congruent or racially incongruent and whether gender moderated these associations. In this study, 259 preschoolers (50% boys; Mage = 53.84 months; 63% White, 37% Black) in 44 classrooms at 16 federally- and privately-funded centers/preschools were rated for their adjustment to preschool using teacher (N = 44; 100% women, 52% White, 38% Black, 2% Asian, 5% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 2% Latine) reports and direct child assessments. Multi-level structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously address the non-independence of the data by estimating higher-level variance components (i.e., variance on a total of six preschool adjustment outcomes out due to the classroom and due to the center) as well as correlated outcomes. Accounting for classroom-level variance as well as school-, classroom-, and child-level covariates, these analyses revealed main effects for gender and teacher-child racial congruence, and not for race, but higher-order interactions were significant. White girls with White teachers scored higher than White girls with Black teachers on four outcomes. Black girls with Black teachers scored higher than Black girls with White teachers on three outcomes and lower on two outcomes. White boys with White teachers scored lower than White boys with Black teachers on three outcomes. Black boys with Black teachers scored lower than Black boys with White teachers on five outcomes and higher on one outcome. Magnitudes of associations found ranged from small to large across the analyses. These findings add to the growing literature concerning teacher racial congruence suggesting its association with preschool adjustment may be moderated by race and gender of the child. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms accounting for these associations.

Teachers' Consistency of Emotional Support Moderates the Association Between Young Children's Regulation Capacities and Their Preschool Adjustment.

Objectives: Preschool teachers' consistency of warm, sensitive, and responsive interactions with children may be more important than average levels and may moderate the association between children's cognitive and emotion regulation and their preschool adjustment. Methods: A sample of 312 boys and girls aged 32 to 68 months in 44 classrooms at 16 privately-funded centers and Head Starts completed assessments of emotional and cognitive regulation and were rated by their teachers using measures of social-emotional functioning. Teacher-child interactions were rated for emotional support. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously explore three aspects of preschool adjustment. Results: Children who were the least regulated were more adjusted to preschool in classrooms where teachers were more consistent in their emotional support, over and above mean emotional support and after controlling for child- and preschool-level covariates. Conclusions: Consistency matters for children's preschool adjustment perhaps even more so than average levels of emotional support.

Preschool Teachers' Socialization of Emotion Knowledge: Considering Socioeconomic Risk.

Emotion knowledge supports early school success. Socializers' emotions, contingent reactions to emotions, emotion language, and beliefs about emotions can contribute to preschoolers' emotion knowledge, but more is known about parents' contributions than teachers'. We expected teachers' emotion socialization findings to parallel those in the parent literature, with potential moderation by classroom-level socioeconomic risk. Participants included 85 teachers and 327 preschoolers in high or low socioeconomic risk classrooms. Children's emotion knowledge was assessed twice. Teachers reported on emotional expressiveness, reactions to children's emotions, and emotion socialization beliefs. Their emotion language during book reading was codified. Hierarchical linear models predicted end-of-year emotion knowledge via emotion socialization, risk, and their interactions, controlling for child age, gender, and beginning-of-year emotion knowledge. Only one finding resembled the parent literature; most were specific to high socioeconomic risk classrooms, highlighting the importance of context in emotion socialization. Applications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are considered.

"You Hit Me! That's Not Nice and it Makes Me Sad!!": Relations of Young Children's Social Information Processing and Early School Success.

As part of a larger longitudinal project on the assessment of preschoolers' social-emotional development, children's social information processing (SIP) responses to unambiguous hypothetical situations of peer provocation were assessed for 239 preschoolers from Head Start and private childcare settings. SIP measurement focused on emotions children would feel during these situations, and their behavior response decisions. The aims of the study were to examine foundations of these SIP responses in self-regulation and emotion knowledge, as well as to consider how adaptive SIP responding predicted concurrent classroom adjustment and pre-academic preacademic literacy. Using a PLS modeling procedure, results showed that both self-regulation and emotion knowledge were associated with adaptive SIP responding. Moreover, adaptive SIP responding predicted classroom adjustment and pre-academic preacademic literacy. Discussion centers on the contribution of social-emotional competence to preacademic literacy.

Emotion Knowledge and Attention Problems in Young Children: a Cross-Lagged Panel Study on the Direction of Effects.

Attention problems are likely to hinder children in acquiring knowledge of their own and others' emotions. Children with little knowledge of emotions tend to have difficulties with representing emotions, interpreting them, and sharing them, so that they are likely to spend more time in making sense of them and may thus appear to be inattentive. In order to disentangle the direction of effects between emotion knowledge and attention problems, 576 four- to- six-year-olds were interviewed at T1 and about 12 months later (T2) about their emotion knowledge. Their kindergarten teachers rated their attention problems, and their conduct problems at T1 and T2. A cross-lagged panel model indicates that children's emotion knowledge at T1 contributed to the explanation of their attention problems at T2, after language ability and attention problems at T1 were controlled. The other cross-path from attention problems (T1) to emotion knowledge (T2) was not significant. Adding gender, behavioral self-regulation, working memory, conduct problems, or SES as alternative explanations by third variables did not alter this direction of effects. How emotion knowledge impinges on attention problems is discussed.

Emotional and organizational supports for preschoolers' emotion regulation: Relations with school adjustment.

Preschool teachers, like parents, support children in ways that promote the regulation capacities that drive school adjustment, especially for children struggling to succeed in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore the emotionally and organizationally supportive classroom processes that contribute to the development of children's emotion regulation and executive control. Emotion regulation and executive control were assessed in 312 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children. The 44 teachers of these children completed questionnaires asking about 3 components of children's school adjustment: Positive/Engaged, Independent/Motivated, and Prosocial/Connected. Observations of classroom emotional and organizational supports were conducted. Results of multilevel models indicated emotion regulation was significantly associated with the Positive/Engaged school adjustment component, but only when teachers' emotional and organizational supports were taken into account. Children with lower levels of emotion regulation, who were also in less supportive classrooms, had the lowest scores on the Positive/Engaged component. Children's executive control was associated with the Independent/Motivated and Prosocial/Connected components independently of teacher effects. In general, moderate support was found for the notion that teachers' supports can be particularly helpful for children struggling to regulate their emotions to be better adjusted to school. Children's emotionally salient classroom behaviors, and teachers' emotion scaffolding, are discussed.

Structure and Validity of Affect Knowledge Test (AKT) in a Sample of Italian Preschoolers.

The authors' main goals were to examine whether the Affect Knowledge Test's (AKT) factor structure would be represented by a two-factor model (i.e., emotion recognition and situation knowledge) or by a one-factor model in Italian preschoolers (N = 164; M = 4.24 years, SD = 1.09 years). The concurrent validity of the AKT was further examined using measures of social competence. The findings replicated a model of emotion knowledge, with emotion recognition and situation knowledge as distinct but interrelated factors. Gender and age differences showed that older children and girls displayed higher scores in situation knowledge than younger children and boys. Additionally, our validity model of the AKT demonstrated that emotion recognition preceded situation knowledge, which in turn was positively related to children's sensitive or cooperative behaviors and negatively associated with anxious or withdrawn behaviors. Our results suggest that the use of the AKT may help the teachers to evaluate children's level on emotional knowledge that in turn might impact on children's positive social relationships within classroom in Italy.

"No-o-o-o Peeking": Preschoolers' Executive Control, Social Competence, and Classroom Adjustment.

The goals of this study were to evaluate (1) how specific aspects of executive control, briefly assessed, predict social competence and classroom adjustment during preschool; and (2) differences between two aspects of executive control, according to child's age, socioeconomic risk status, and gender. The facets of executive control were defined as cool executive control (CEC; affectively neutral, slow acting, and late developing) and hot executive control (HEC; more emotional, fast acting, and early developing). Two hundred eighty-seven 3- to 5-year-old children from private child care and Head Start centers were directly assessed during executive control tasks, and preschool teachers provided information on their school success. Aspects of executive control varied with age, socioeconomic risk, and gender. Specifically, older children performed better on CEC tasks across three age levels; for HEC tasks, change was seen only between 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. Children of mothers with less formal education performed less well on CEC than those whose mothers had more education; girls performed better than boys on HEC tasks. Further, facets of executive control were differentially related to later social competence and classroom adjustment. HEC predicted social competence, whereas CEC uniquely predicted classroom adjustment. Implications for everyday practice and specific curricula formulation are discussed.

Relations between executive function and emotionality in preschoolers: Exploring a transitive cognition-emotion linkage.

Emotions play a crucial role in appraisal of experiences and environments and in guiding thoughts and actions. Moreover, executive function (EF) and emotion regulation (ER) have received much attention, not only for positive associations with children's social-emotional functioning, but also for potential central roles in cognitive functioning. In one conceptualization of ER (Campos etal., 2004), processes of ER, and those of emotional expression and experience (hereafter referred to as emotionality) are highly related and reciprocal; yet, there has been little research on young children's EF that focuses on emotionality, although it is easily observed within a classroom. The two goals of the study were to: (1) investigate the relatively unexplored role of emotionality in the development of EF in early childhood and (2) assess the relations between an observational rating of EF obtained after direct assessment with a standardized EF rating scale. We predicted that observed emotionality and EF would both demonstrate stability and predict one another within and across time. 175 children aged 35-60 months were recruited from Head Start and private childcare centers. Using partial least squares modeling, we chose T1 emotionality as the exogenous variable and tested pathways between emotionality and EF across two time points, 6 months apart. Results showed that both T1 observed EF and emotionality predicted their respective T2 counterparts, supporting the idea that both constructs build upon existing systems. Further, T1 emotionality predicted T1 observed EF and the T2 BRIEF-P composite. In turn, T1 observed EF predicted emotionality and the T2 BRIEF-P composite. These findings fit with literature on older populations in which EF and emotionality have been related, yet are the first to report such relations in early childhood. Last, T1 observed EF's positive prediction of the T2 BRIEF-P composite lends credence to the use of both EF measures in applied and research settings.

"How Would You Feel? What Would You Do?" Development and Underpinnings of Preschoolers' Social Information Processing.

Young children's social information processing (SIP) encompasses a series of steps by which they make sense of encounters with other persons; both cognitive and emotional aspects of SIP often predict adjustment in school settings. More attention is needed, however, to the development of preschoolers' SIP and its potential foundations. To this end, a new preschool SIP measure, the Challenging Situations Task (CST), was utilized; preschoolers' (n = 316) self-reported emotional and behavioral responses to hypothetical peer provocation situations on the CST were assessed longitudinally, along with aspects of their self-regulation and emotion knowledge. Age and developmental differences in CST responses were examined. Next, contributions of executive control and emotion knowledge to CST responses were analyzed. Age differences in emotion and behavior choices showed that younger preschoolers were more prone to choose happy responses, whereas older preschoolers chose more adaptive behavior responses. Both self-regulation and emotion knowledge were associated with emotion and behavior responses concurrently and across time. Implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Preschoolers' emotion expression and regulation: relations with school adjustment.

Children's expression and regulation of emotions are building blocks of their experiences in classrooms. Thus, the authors' primary goal was to investigate whether preschoolers' expression or ability to regulate emotions were associated with teachers' ratings of school adjustment. A secondary goal was to investigate how boys and girls differed across these associations. Children's social-emotional behaviors in Head Start and private childcare center classrooms were observed, and using a series of measures, teachers' ratings of children's social competence, attitudes toward school, positive teacher relationships, and cooperative participation were collected. Three factors of children's school adjustment were extracted from these indicators. A series of hierarchical regressions revealed that emotion expression and regulation were indeed associated with children's reported school adjustment, with the strongest associations stemming from children's negative emotion expression and their emotion dysregulation. Many of these associations were also different for boys and girls. The results corroborate and extend the authors' earlier findings, and have implications for social-emotional programming to maximize children's early school success.

Relations among Teachers' Emotion Socialization Beliefs and Practices, and Preschoolers' Emotional Competence.

RESEARCH FINDINGS: Utilizing a three-part model of emotion socialization that includes Modeling, Contingent Responding, and Teaching, this study examined the associations between 44 teachers' self-reported and observed emotion socialization practices and 326 preschoolers' emotion knowledge and observed emotional behavior. Multi-level analyses revealed that the majority of the variance in the children's emotion knowledge scores and observed emotional behavior was predicted by factors within, rather than between, classrooms. Teachers' use of all three emotion socialization techniques did contribute to the prediction of the children's scores; however, the nature of these associations differed by children's age and gender. PRACTICE OR POLICY: The development of children's emotional competence is a complex, multi-faceted process in which many interaction partners play a role; early childhood teachers act as emotion socialization agents for the children in their care by modeling emotions, responding either supportively or punitively to children's expressions of emotions, and engaging in direct instruction regarding emotional experience. This research may provide a basis for potential future interventions designed to assist teachers in developing their own emotion socialization skills so that they can be more effective emotion socialization agents for the children in their care.

Preschoolers' social information processing and early school success: the challenging situations task.

As part of a larger longitudinal project on the assessment of preschoolers' social-emotional development, children's social information processing (SIP) responses to unambiguous hypothetical situations of peer provocation were assessed for 298 four-year-olds from Head Start and private childcare settings. Measurement focused on emotions children would feel during these situations, and their behaviour response decisions. Participants most often chose sad and angry emotions, and socially competent and passive behaviours. Relations were found between sad emotion and socially competent behaviour choices, as well as between angry emotion and aggressive behaviour choices. Sad emotion and socially competent behaviour responses contributed to variance in contemporaneous and later school adjustment and kindergarten academic readiness. There was evidence that the contributions of sad emotion responses were mediated by those of socially competent behaviour choices. Results bolstered calls to include emotion in SIP measures, supported predictive validity for this SIP measure in a large representative sample of preschoolers, and pointed to fruitful pathways for future research.

Social and emotional information processing in preschoolers: Indicator of early school success?

To better connect emotional development and social cognition literatures, the intersection of preschoolers' emotion and behaviour response choices to hypothetical peer conflicts was examined among 305 4 ½-year-olds in private childcare and Head Start. Latent class analyses identified five subgroups of children with connections between their emotion and behaviour response choices (Happy/Passive, Sad/Socially Competent, Angry/Passive, Angry/Aggressive, Sad/Passive). Subgroup membership differed across gender and economic risk status, and was also a predictor of early school success (i.e., social competence, classroom adjustment, and academic readiness). Overall, even after accounting for the associations between known predictors of young children's behaviour and school success (i.e., gender and SES), membership in the subgroups at preschool was uniquely predictive of both concurrent and later social competence, classroom adjustment, and academic readiness. Further, preschool social competence partially mediated contributions of subgroup membership on kindergarten classroom adjustment. These findings are discussed in relation to existing social information processing and emotional development literatures, including potential implications for understanding young children's early school success.

Observing preschoolers' social-emotional behavior: structure, foundations, and prediction of early school success.

Social-emotional behavior of 352 3- and 4-year-olds attending private child-care and Head Start programs was observed using the Minnesota Preschool Affect Checklist, Revised (MPAC-R). Goals of the investigation included (a) using MPAC-R data to extract a shortened version, MPAC-R/S, comparing structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and stability of both versions; and, using the shortened measure, to examine (b) age, gender, and risk status differences in social-emotional behaviors; (c) contributions of emotion knowledge and executive function to social-emotional behaviors; and (d) contributions of social-emotional behaviors to early school adjustment and kindergarten academic success. Results show that reliability of MPAC-R/S was as good, or better, than the MPAC-R. MPAC-R/S structure, at both times of observation, included emotionally negative/aggressive, emotionally regulated/prosocial, and emotionally positive/productive behaviors; MPAC-R structure was similar but less replicable over time. Age, gender, and risk differences were found. Children's emotion knowledge contributed to later emotionally regulated/prosocial behavior. Finally, preschool emotionally negative/aggressive behaviors were associated with concurrent and kindergarten school success, and there was evidence of social-emotional behavior mediating relations between emotion knowledge or executive function, and school outcomes. The importance of portable, empirically supported observation measures of social-emotional behaviors is discussed along with possible applications, teacher utilization, and implementation barriers.

Social-Emotional Learning Profiles of Preschoolers' Early School Success: A Person-Centered Approach.

Examined how aspects of social-emotional learning (SEL)-specifically, emotion knowledge, emotional and social behaviors, social problem-solving, and self-regulation-clustered to typify groups of children who differ in terms of their motivation to learn, participation in the classroom, and other indices of early school adjustment and academic success. 275 four-year-old children from private day schools and Head Start were directly assessed and observed in these areas, and preschool and kindergarten teachers provided information on social and academic aspects of their school success. Three groups of children were identified: SEL Risk, SEL Competent-Social/Expressive, and SEL Competent-Restrained. Group members differed on demographic dimensions of gender and center type, and groups differed in meaningful ways on school success indices, pointing to needed prevention/intervention programming. In particular, the SEL Risk group could benefit from emotion-focused programming, and the long-term developmental trajectory of the SEL Competent-Restrained group requires study.

Factor structure of self-regulation in preschoolers: testing models of a field-based assessment for predicting early school readiness.

The importance of early self-regulatory skill has seen increased focus in the applied research literature given the implications of these skills for early school success. A three-factor latent structure of self-regulation consisting of compliance, cool executive control, and hot executive control was tested against alternative models and retained as best fitting. Tests of model equivalence indicated that the model held invariant across Head Start and private child-care samples. Partial invariance was supported for age and gender. In the validity model, because of a substantial amount of shared variance among latent factors, we included a second-order factor explaining the two types of executive control. Higher order executive control positively predicted teacher report of learning behaviors and social competence in the classroom. These findings are discussed in light of their practical and theoretical significance.

Gender differences in the socialization of preschoolers' emotional competence.

Preschoolers' socialization of emotion and its contribution to emotional competence is likely to be highly gendered. In their work, the authors have found that mothers often take on the role of emotional gatekeeper in the family, and fathers act as loving playmates, but that parents' styles of socialization of emotion do not usually differ for sons and daughters. They also found several themes in the prediction of preschoolers' emotion knowledge and regulation. For example, sometimes mother-father differences in emotional style actually seem to promote such competence, and girls seem particularly susceptible to parental socialization of emotion.