The relationship between children's emotion understanding aged between 48-72 months of age and maternal emotional socialization behavior

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between maternal emotional socialization behavior to preschool children?s negative emotions, and preschool children?s understanding of emotions. The participants of the present study were 210 Turkish preschoolers aged between 48 and 72 months of age and their mothers. All participants were drawn from preschools/kindergardens located in Ankara. The emotion understanding skills of preschoolers were evaluated) by Affect Knowledge Test, including emotion labeling, emotion recognizing and perspective taking skills of preschoolers. As for the emotion recognition part of the Affect Knowledge Test, in order to determine the childrens? level of readiness in receptive language skills; before the application of The Affect Knowledge Test, The Receptive subtest of TIFALDI (Turkish Expressive and Receptive Language Test) was administered. The mother?s occupation, education level and family income level were assessed by using Maternal Demographic Characteristics Form. In order to gather general information about children, Information Form was used. Mother's emotional socialization behavior were evaluated with the Coping with Negative Emotion Scale.Children?s emotion understanding skills and maternal supportive and nonsupportive responses were handled in terms of children?s month and gender, mother?s occupation and education level, family income in this study. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted for Turkish adaptation of Affect Knowledge Test. Twoway ANOVA was used to assess sex and gender differences in emotion understanding, supportive maternal responses and nonsupportive maternal responses. Dunnett?s C Method was used for post-hoc comparisons to find group differences.One-way ANOVA was performed to assess mother?s occupation and education level, family income level differences in children?s emotion understanding and supportive maternal responses and nonsupportive maternal responses. Scheffe?s S Method was used for post hoc comparisons. The relationship between children?s emotion understanding and maternal emotional socialization (supportive and nonsupportive responses) was evaulated by Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficients. Results indicated that emotion understanding reflected significant month differences among preschoolers. Gender differences did not emerge in children?s emotion understanding. Emotion understanding did not indicate significant differences depending on mother?s occupation and education level, family income. Supportive responses of maternal socialization did not reflect any significant differences according to children?s month and gender. Nonsupportive responses of of maternal socialization did not produce any significant differences according to children?s gender. Nonsupportive responses of of maternal socialization yielded significant differences based on children?s month but this effect was quite small. Supportive reactions did not produce a significant difference based on mother?s occupation and education level, family income but nonsupportive reactions revealed significant differences according to mother?s occupation and education level, family income. The results did not provide a significant relationship between preschooler?s emotion understanding and maternal emotional socialization behaviors to preschooler?s negative emotions.