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Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2024)

This dissertation examined two distinct affective processes as antecedents of healthy socioemotional functioning: emotion recognition in vocal bursts and controllability beliefs about emotions. This investigation, consisting of two sections, utilized a longitudinal study spanning from early childhood through pre-adolescence (NT1 = 168, NT2 = 98). The first section explored children’s ability to recognize emotions in vocal bursts and its socioemotional correlates. Results revealed that gender differentially predicted the developmental trajectories of recognition accuracy in this modality. Specifically, while younger girls (vs. boys) were better at recognizing emotions in vocal bursts, this difference disappeared by age eight. In addition, higher competence in this ability predicted a lower likelihood of parent-reported conduct problems and a higher tendency toward parent-reported prosocial behavior concurrently, with the latter effect staying significant longitudinally. The second section investigated parents’ beliefs about children’s capacity to control their emotions (“emotion controllability”) as another antecedent for socioemotional development. Results indicated that parents’ beliefs about children’s emotion controllability predicted children’s own emotion controllability beliefs. These beliefs of children, in turn, predicted their use of cognitive change strategies and, subsequently, better socioemotional functioning. These findings contribute to our growing understanding of how both emotion recognition and emotion controllability beliefs are important factors in predicting children’s adaptive functioning.

    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2024)
    A cool attentional focus during the classic delay of gratification (DG) task involves shifting attention away from the emotion-arousing features and is a key mechanism that underlies children's ability to resist temptation and wait. Yet, we know relatively little about what gives rise to individual differences in cool focus in the first place. The current study (N = 162, Mage = 6.86 years) addressed this question by focusing on key aspects of child temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition, BI) and caregiver emotion socialization (i.e., distraction encouragement) as joint predictors of cool focus. We theorized that because children are left alone in an unfamiliar environment for an undefined duration, the DG task would be especially taxing for children higher in BI, hindering their ability to deploy a cool focus and wait. We also reasoned that caregiver encouragement of distraction would serve as a protective factor by allowing children higher in BI to more easily activate a cool focus even when experiencing a taxing task. Results were partially consistent with these hypotheses, shedding new light on precursors to a central ingredient of DG ability.
      Cover page: Child inhibited temperament and caregiver distraction encouragement jointly predict children’s delay of gratification competencies
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