Maternal Socialization of Emotion Through Narrative Storytelling With Preschoolers S' Kibblewhite, T

1
Maternal Socialization of Emotion Through
Narrative Storytelling With PreschoolersS.
Kibblewhite, T. Lopetrone, S. Voelker, J.
Hakim-LarsonUniversity of Windsor

• Abstract
• The primary purpose of the present study was to
  examine normative emotion decoding data for a
  sample of self-reported emotion coaching mothers
  engaging in a didactic storytelling task. A
  second purpose of the study was to examine
  parenting style as a multidimensional construct
  in relation to emotion decoding. A total of 18
  mothers of preschool children completed the
  Parenting Styles Self-Test (PSST Gottman, 1997
  modified by Hakim-Larson Lee, 1999), the
  Reasons for Reading Questionnaire (adapted from
  Harkins, 1993), and a storytelling task using the
  Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) picture book.
  Mothers spontaneously provided few emotion labels
  for the 16 emotion stimuli in the storytelling
  task. They were more accurate when decoding
  obvious versus subtle stimuli. Mothers overall
  decoding accuracy correlated positively with the
  importance they place in reading to their child
  to introduce emotionally difficult topics.
  Mothers disapproving scores correlated
  positively with negative emotion decoding
  accuracy. Mothers dismissing scores correlated
  positively with negative emotion decoding
  accuracy and negatively with positive emotion
  decoding accuracy. No significant differences in
  number of emotions labeled or decoding accuracy
  were found as a function of child gender. Study
  findings are discussed briefly.

• Method
• This study is part of a larger project examining
  the development of emotional competence within
  the context of parent-child interactions
• Participants
• 18 mothers of preschoolers recruited through an
  undergraduate Psychology participant pool
• Mothers ranged in age from 24 to 38 (M 29.2, SD
  4.45)
• Preschoolers (9 males, 9 females) ranged in age
  from 3 to 5 (M 4.0, SD .91) Childrens ages
  did not differ significantly by gender
• All of the mothers identified primarily with an
  emotion coaching style

• Results (continued)
• Emotion Decoding Accuracy
• Mothers were generally accurate in the emotion
  labels that they provided, M 87.65, SD 19.99
  (see Table 2)
• Mothers were more accurate when decoding obvious
  versus subtle stimuli, t(11) 2.272, p lt .05
• No significant differences in decoding accuracy
  were found as a function of child gender
• Reasons for Reading Mothers overall decoding
  accuracy correlated positively with the
  importance they place in reading to their child
  to introduce emotionally difficult topics, r
  .557, p lt .05
• Parenting Style Mothers disapproving scores
  correlated positively with negative emotion
  decoding accuracy, r .471, p lt .10. Mothers
  dismissing scores correlated positively with
  negative emotion decoding accuracy, r .485, p lt
  .10, and negatively with positive emotion
  decoding accuracy, r -.583, p lt .10

• Discussion
• Number Of Emotion Labels Provided
• Mothers in general, provided few emotion labels
  for the emotion stimuli. This was somewhat
  surprising considering that, (1) participants
  were primed to the purpose of the task and its
  focus on emotion socialization, and (2) the
  sample primarily identified with an emotion
  coaching parenting style that would be
  hypothesized to value such an opportunity to
  teaching emotional understanding (Gottman, 1997).
  This study was limited by such a homogeneous
  sample. Future research may examine the
  prevalence of emotion labels provided across
  parenting styles. Furthermore, the absence of
  emotion labels does not necessarily imply the
  absence of emotional content. Examination of
  behavioural expressions of affect (e.g., smiling,
  crying) and emotional tone may also provide
  valuable information regarding socialization of
  emotion during a story-telling task.
• Mothers laissez-faire scores correlated
  negatively with the overall number of emotion
  responses provided. These findings fit with the
  conceptualization of laissez-faire parents as
  those who take little opportunity to teach their
  children about emotions (Gottman, 1997). As
  such, they may be less likely to include emotion
  language into their storytelling.
• Emotion Decoding Accuracy
• The findings observed in which mothers were more
  accurate when decoding obvious versus subtle
  emotion stimuli parallels findings reported in
  the literature (e.g., Hess, Blairy, Kleck,
  1997). Emotion stimuli that more closely
  approximate prototypical expressions of emotion
  are generally easier to decode.
• Mothers overall decoding accuracy correlated
  positively with the importance they place in
  reading to their child to introduce emotionally
  difficult topics, r .557, p lt .05. Perhaps
  those parents who value reading as an emotion
  socialization activity are more invested and
  deliberate when describing the emotion-related
  characteristics of story-book characters.
• Mothers disapproving and dismissing scores
  correlated positively with negative emotion
  decoding accuracy. This has interesting
  implications for these parents who perceive
  themselves as primarily emotion coaching, but may
  be biased toward accuracy in teaching about
  negative emotions.
• Child Gender
• No significant differences in decoding accuracy
  or number of emotions labelled were found as a
  function of child gender. These findings do not
  correspond with studies of child gender and
  maternal discussion of emotion mentioned earlier.
  However, differences based on child gender may
  not be as salient in a sample of emotion coaching
  parents who value the opportunity to talk with
  and educate their children about emotions
  (Gottman, 1997).

• Measures/Procedure
• Background Information Form
• Parenting Styles Self-Test (Gottman, 1997
  modified by Lee, Hakim-Larson, Voelker, 2000)
• Reasons for Reading Questionnaire (adapted from
  Harkins, 1993)
• Participants completed a storytelling task in
  their homes in which they tape-recorded
  themselves telling a text-free story to their
  child (Frog, Where Are You? Mayer, 1969)

• Introduction
• Research examining emotion socialization in
  families suggests that parents influence their
  childrens social and emotional development by
  how they approach emotionally laden information
  themselves and how they convey this information
  or knowledge to their children (Eisenberg,
  Cumberland, Spinrad, 1998)
• Parents may use stories or narratives to convey
  the meaning of events to their children (Saarni,
  1999)
• The act of storytelling provides an opportunity,
  in an everyday setting, for parents to facilitate
  the development of a childs emotional competence
  through the discussion of emotional content as it
  is presented in children's stories
• One aspect of storytelling involves the labelling
  or decoding of emotions (e.g., Berman Slobin,
  1994 Harkins, 1993 Stavans, 1996) .
• The extent to which parents label characters
  emotions and label them accurately may vary as a
  function of
• Intensity of the emotion stimulus (Hess, Blairy,
  Kleck, 1997)
• Valence of the emotion stimulus (i.e., positive
  vs. negative Fox et al., 2000 Biehl, Matsumoto,
  Ekman, Hearn, 1997)
• Child gender (Dunn, Bretherton, Munn, 1987
  Fivush, 1989 Kuebli, Butler, Fivush, 1995
  Kuebli Fivush, 1992)
• Emotion parenting style
• Emotion Parenting Style predominant method or
  style parents use to teach their children to
  recognize, express, and control emotion (Gottman,
  1997)
• Four parenting styles have been identified
  (Gottman, 1997)
• Emotion-coaching (i.e., value emotions as
  opportunities for teaching emotional
  understanding)
• Laissez-faire (i.e., permissive acceptance of
  childrens emotions with little teaching of
  emotional regulation and management)
• Dismissing (i.e., minimization of emotions with
  little or no effort to teach the child emotional
  problem-solving)
• Disapproving (i.e., criticism and punishment of
  childrens emotions with an overemphasis on
  conformity and limits)

• Table 1
• Mean Number of Emotion Labels (N 18)

• Results
• Preliminary Analyses
• Tapes were coded for the emotion labels mothers
  assigned to 16 of the picture book characters
  (i.e., the emotion stimuli)
• This study utilized normative data on the decoded
  emotions collected by the primary author for her
  Masters Thesis (Kibblewhite Hakim-Larson,
  2002)
• The 16 emotion stimuli examined in the current
  study were selected on the basis of the levels of
  decoded emotion agreement found in the original
  normative sample
• The normative data dictated the categorization of
  the emotion stimuli into four different groups
  obvious (8), subtle (8), positive (8), and
  negative (8)
• Accuracy of the mothers emotion labels was
  assessed through comparison with the normative
  data (i.e., decoding accuracy was based on per
  cent of emotion labels provided by the mothers
  that matched those obtained in the normative
  sample)
• Number of Emotion Labels
• Mothers spontaneously provided few emotion labels
  for the 16 emotion stimuli in the story telling
  task, M 4.22, SD 2.98 (see Table 1)
• Mothers provided the same number of emotion
  labels for both obvious and subtle emotion
  stimuli, t(17) .860, p .40
• When controlled for the duration of the
  storytelling task, mothers laissez-faire scores
  correlated negatively with the overall number of
  emotion responses provided, pr -.72, p lt .05
• No significant differences in number of emotions
  labeled were found as a function of child gender

• Table 2
• Mean Percentage of Decoding Accuracy (N 18)

• References
• Berman, R. A., Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating
  events in narrative A crosslinguistic
  developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ Lawrence
  Erlbaum.
• Biehl, M., Matsumoto, D., Ekman, P., Hearn, V.
  (1997). Matsumoto and Ekmans Japanese and
  Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion
  (JACFEE) Reliability data and cross-national
  differences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21,
  3-21.
• Dunn, J., Bretherton, I., Munn, P. (1987).
  Conversations about feeling states between
  mothers and their young children. Developmental
  Psychology, 23, 132-139.
• Fivush, R. (1989) Exploring sex differences in
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  conversations about the past. Sex Roles, 20,
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• Fox, E., Lester, V., Russo, R., Bowles, R.,
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  expressions of emotion Are angry faces detected
  more efficiently? Cognition Emotion,14, 61-92.
• Harkins, D. A. (1993). Parental goals and styles
  of storytelling. In J. Demick, K. Bursik
  (Eds.), Parental Development. Hillsdale, NJ
  Lawrence Erlbaum
• Hess, U., Blairy, S., Kleck, R. E. (1997). The
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  decoding accuracy. Journal of Nonverbal
  Behavior, 21, 241-257.
• Kibblewhite, S., Hakim-Larson, J. (2003,
  April). Family expressiveness and emotion
  decoding in university students. Poster
  presented at the meeting of the Society for
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• Kuebli, J., Butler, S., Fivush, R. (1995).
  Mother-child talk about past emotions Relations
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• Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? NY Dial.
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• Purpose of Present Study
• Examine normative emotion decoding data for a
  sample of self-reported emotion coaching mothers
  engaging in a didactic storytelling task
• Examine parenting style as a multidimensional
  construct in relation to emotion decoding