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AbstractThis introduction to the Social Development Quartet summarizes four articles that examine age‐related and contextual shifts in the utility of parents' emotion socialization responses for children's social‐emotional development. The first two articles present evidence for age‐related changes in the benefits of parents' supportive responses and consequences of parents' nonsupportive responses to children's negative emotions between early and middle childhood. The next two articles consider contextual variations in this developmental shift by examining teacher reports of children's competence and family patterns of response among mothers and fathers. Together, these studies question the unilateral assumption that parental support of children's negative emotions is always a good thing, and provide a more nuanced understanding of when and in what contexts parents' responses are adaptive for children.

AbstractTheoretical conceptualizations of emotion understanding generally imply a two‐factor structure comprised of recognition of emotional expressions and understanding emotion‐eliciting situations. We tested this structure in middle childhood and then explored the unique predictive value of various facets of emotion understanding in explaining children's socioemotional competence. Participants were 201 third‐grade children and their mothers. Children completed five different measures, which provided eight distinct indices of emotion understanding. Mothers completed two questionnaires assessing children's socioemotional skills and problems. Results indicated that: (a) emotion understanding in third‐grade children was differentiated into three unique factors: Prototypical Emotion Recognition, Prototypical Emotion Knowledge, and Advanced Emotion Understanding, (b) skills within factors were modestly related, (c) factors varied in complexity, supporting theoretical and empirical models detailing developmental sequencing of skills, and (d) skills in Prototypical Emotion Knowledge were uniquely related to mothers' reports of third‐grade children's socioemotional competence. Implications regarding elementary‐school‐age children's social cognitive development are discussed.

AbstractParents' supportive reactions to children's negative emotions are thought to promote children's social adjustment. Research heretofore has implicitly assumed that such reactions are equally supportive of children's adjustment across ages. Recent findings challenge this assumption, suggesting that during middle childhood, socialization practices previously understood as supportive may in fact impede children's social adjustment. We explored this possibility in a sample of 203 third‐grade children and their mothers. Using structural equation modeling, we tested associations between mothers' supportive (i.e., problem‐ and emotion‐focused) reactions to children's negative emotions and children's social skills and problems as reported by mothers and teachers. Mothers' supportive reactions predicted greater social adjustment in children as reported by mothers. Inverse associations, however, were found with teachers' reports of children's social adjustment: mothers' supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors. These contrasting patterns suggest potential unperceived costs associated with mothers' supportiveness of children's negative emotions for third‐grade children's social adjustment in school and highlight the importance of considering associations between socialization practices and children's various social contexts. The findings also highlight a need for greater consideration of what supportiveness means across different developmental periods.

AbstractTo explore how parental socialization of emotion may influence children's emotion understanding, which then guides children's interpretations of emotion‐related situations across contexts, we examined the pathways between socialization of emotion and children's adjustment in the classroom, with children's emotion understanding as an intervening variable. Specifically, children's emotion understanding was examined as a mediator of associations between mothers' beliefs about the value and danger of children's emotions and children's adjustment in the classroom within an SEM framework. Classroom adjustment was estimated as a latent variable and included social, emotional, and behavioral indices. Covariates included maternal education, and child gender and ethnicity. Participants were a diverse group of 201 third‐graders (116 African American, 81 European American, 4 Biracial; 48.8% female), their mothers, and teachers. Results revealed that emotion‐related beliefs (value and danger) had no direct influence on classroom adjustment. However, children whose mothers endorsed the belief that emotions are dangerous demonstrated less emotion understanding and were less well‐adjusted in the classroom. Mothers' belief that emotions are valuable was not independently associated with emotion understanding. Findings point to the important role of emotion understanding in children's development across contexts (family, classroom) and developmental domains (social, emotional, behavioral) during the middle childhood years.

AbstractInteroception, often defined as the perception of internal physiological changes, is implicated in many adult social affective processes, but its effects remain understudied in the context of parental socialization of children's emotions. We hypothesized that what parents know about the interoceptive concomitants of emotions, or interoceptive knowledge (e.g., "my heart races when excited"), may be especially relevant in emotion socialization and in supporting children's working models of emotions and the social world. We developed a measure of mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions and examined its relation to children's social affective outcomes relative to other socialization factors, including self‐reported parental behaviors, emotion beliefs, and knowledge of emotion‐relevant situations and non‐verbal expressions. To assess these, mothers (N = 201) completed structured interviews and questionnaires. A few months later, third‐grade teachers rated children's social skills and emotion regulation observed in the classroom. Results indicated that mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions was associated with children's social affective skills (emotion regulation, social initiative, cooperation, self‐control), even after controlling for child gender and ethnicity, family income, maternal stress, and the above maternal socialization factors. Overall, findings suggest that mothers' interoceptive knowledge may provide an additional, unique pathway by which children acquire social affective competence.

AbstractObjectivesAge shifts in emotion regulation may be rooted in beliefs about different strategies. We test whether there are age differences in the beliefs people hold about specific emotion regulation strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation and whether profiles of emotion beliefs vary by age.MethodAn adult life-span sample (N = 557) sorted 13 emotion regulation strategies either by (a) how effective the strategies would be or (b) how likely they would be to use them, in 15 negative emotion-eliciting situations.ResultsYounger adults ranked attentional and cognitive distraction more effective than older adults, and preferred avoidance, distraction, and rumination more (and attentional deployment less) than middle-aged and older adults. Latent profile analysis on preferences identified three distinct strategy profiles: Classically adaptive regulators preferred a variety of strategies; situation modifiers showed strong preferences for changing situations; a small percentage of people preferred avoidance and rumination. Middle-aged and older adults were more likely than younger adults to be classically adaptive regulators (as opposed to situation modifiers or avoiders/ruminators).DiscussionThese findings provide insight into the reasons people of different ages may select and implement different emotion regulation strategies, which may influence their emotional well-being.