Facilitating children's use of emotional language

2012-11-06The study examined the effects of rapport building (emotional, NICHD) and prompt type (what-next, cued-action, cued-emotion, what-think) on 142 4- to 9-year-old maltreated children’s spontaneous and prompted emotional language. Children in the emotional rapport building condition narrated the last time they felt good and the last time they felt bad on the playground. Children in the NICHD rapport building condition narrated their last birthday party and what happened yesterday. Following rapport building, all children were presented a series of story stems about positive and negative situations. Emotional rapport building demonstrated some positive albeit temporary effects on children’s use of emotional language. Cued-emotion prompts appeared to be the most productive in eliciting emotional language. Overall, there were few effects due to age. Children often produced less emotional language when describing negative events, particularly with respect to their spontaneous utterances, suggesting reluctance. These differences largely disappeared when children were asked additional questions, particularly cued-emotion questions. The results support the utility of emotional rapport building and cued-emotion prompts as a means of increasing children’s use of emotional language