Changing correlates of preschoolers\u27 emotion understanding

The influence of family expressiveness, maternal emotion talk, and emotion regulation on emotion understanding was examined at 3 (N = 58) and 4 (N = 52) years. A specific model of influence was tested that proposed that at 3 years family expressiveness and maternal emotion talk would be most important for emotion understanding while at 4 years, emotion regulation would become more influential, with family expressiveness and maternal talk diminishing in importance. Overall, the model was not strongly supported at either age, but appeared to work better at 3 years of age. However, this result was influenced by the sex of the child. When examining boys\u27 and girls\u27 performance separately at each age, the model fit fairly well for boys\u27 emotion understanding, but did not fit well for girls\u27 emotion understanding. The findings suggest that the influences of family expressiveness, maternal emotion talk, and emotion regulation on emotion understanding change with age and are dependent on the sex of the child.