An Experimental Study On The Influence Of Parental Emotional Ideas On Emotion Regulation Of Preschool Children

As important environmental factors in the children’s growth process, the familyplay important roles in the socialization of the preschoolers. In recent years, research on parentalemotion socialization has become a new hot research topic to examine effects of parentingbehavior of children’s emotional development. More and more studies have found that theemotional atmosphere of family or school has an important influence on many aspects ofchildren’s development, such as social competence, emotion, personality, mental health andachievement. The affective characteristics during the interaction process between parents andchildren are associated with children’s social behavior, peer relationships and problem behavior.Children learn much more than specific emotional expression skills in the family, such as angry,sad or happy. They acquire a series of cognitive and regulatory process associated withemotional disclosure. Emotional experience, emotion expressivity often accompanied byemotional regulation so that it has aroused widespread concern. Parenting behavior has influenceon the emotional development of children, while parent’s attitude, cognition and values toemotion has guiding significance for parenting behaviors. Based on this theory, the current studyis mainly designed to investigate the influence exerted by parental meta-emotion philosophy，children’s temperament and their interactions in the preschools’ emotion regulation. As the mainmembers of the family, father plays an important role in the growth of children, so the study willinvestigate the influence exerted by fathers in the preschools’ emotion regulation separately.90children (42girls and48boys) ages4-7and their parents were recruited from onekindergartens in Qufu of Shan Dong province as the participants of this study. By employing themethod of experimental observation measurement of children’s emotion regulation ability.Preschoolers’ emotion regulation was assessed by “Disappointing Gift Paradigm”, video andcoding children’s emotional responses after they saw the disappointment gift. Meanwhile,“Parental Meta-emotion Questionnaire” was employed for the measurement of parentalmeta-emotion philosophy, the rating was provided by fathers and mothers. While “CBQ” was forchildren’s temperament, provided by mothers.The main conclusions of this study:(1) Generally, mother’s emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy could significantlypredict the higher emotion regulatory ability in preschoolers, while mother’s emotion-noninvolvement and emotion-dysfunction meta-emotion both were related to loweremotion regulatory ability in preschoolers.(2) Father’s emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy could significantly predict thehigher emotion regulatory ability in preschoolers.(3) Children’s inhibitory control could significantly predict the higher emotion regulatoryability in preschoolers.(4) Moderating roles of Children’s inhibitory control were found on the relationshipsbetween mother’s emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy and preschoolers’ emotionregulation. Compared to preschoolers whose inhibitory control was higher, the prediction wasmore clearly showed in preschoolers whose inhibitory control was lower.