Abstract

This study examined how parents and children discuss self-conscious emotions across early childhood. Self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, awe, and pride play a critical role in children's social and emotional development. Although prior research has demonstrated links between parent and child emotion talk about basic emotions such as happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, less is known about how parents and children talk about self-conscious emotions. Participants for the current study were 247 parent-child dyads. The dyads completed a wordless storybook task designed to elicit discussion of five self-conscious emotions (shame, guilt, embarrassment, awe, and pride) annually across three years of early childhood (2.5 to 4.5 years old). Cross-lagged panel models were used to examine the concurrent and longitudinal associations of parent and child emotion talk. Results revealed consistent, positive concurrent associations between parent and child emotion talk. One negative cross-lagged effect from children to parents emerged, suggesting that parents' emotion talk functions as scaffolding that is contingent upon their child's shifting zone of proximal development. These findings underscore the importance of parental guidance in shaping children's understanding of self-conscious emotions and highlight early childhood as a key period for interventions supporting healthy emotional development.

Degree

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Rights

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