Caregiver Emotional Expressivity to Young Children

Overview

Emotional competence, i.e., understanding and regulating emotions, is crucial for social competence and educational achievement in early childhood (Denham, 2019). Caregivers' emotion expressivity and regulation abilities influence parenting behaviors and are central contributors to the development of children's emotional competence (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Hajal & Paley, 2020). These studies use two different data sets to examine caregivers' emotional expressiveness to toddlers: ecological momentary assessments (EMA) and videotaped observational data of naturalistic interactions. Of particular interest is how the function of caregivers' emotional expressiveness varies based on financial stress levels. For examples, caregivers may exhibit more negative and unregulated emotions to teach children norms and values when they are less stressed.

Conducted by

Lukas Lopez and Marissa Diener

Gaps Addressed in Study

• Assessing caregivers' emotion expressivity using real time assessments
• Examining the diverse array of caregiver affectively organized functional behaviors
• Probing the effects of financial stress on caregiver expressivity more generally.