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Differential treatment of students by race is well documented, and potentially driven by implicit processes relating to racial prejudice. To better understand some of the pathways by which racial prejudice may be activated, we examined preservice teachers’ racialized perceptions specific to emotion. Forty preservice teachers identified the emotions expressed in 20 Black and White male and female faces in order to assess racialized emotion accuracy and anger bias; participants also judged hostility in videos of 4 Black and White boys’ misbehaviors with peers in school in order to assess racialized attributions. We conducted a series of multilevel models with assessments of Black and White faces (or boys) nested within preservice teachers. Results indicated that emotions in Black faces were less accurately recognized than emotions in White faces; Black faces were more likely to be seen as angry even when they were not, compared to White faces; and boys’ misbehaviors were perceived as more hostile than those of White boys. Together, these results consistently suggest that racialized emotion-related perceptions may enter the classroom with preservice teachers. Implications, as well as limitations that may be resolved in future studies, and extensions of these findings to other minority status populations are discussed.

To 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.

Numerous parental emotion socialization factors have been implicated as direct and indirect contributors to the development of children's emotional competence. To date, however, no study has combined parents' emotion-related beliefs, behaviors, and regulation strategies in one model to assess their cumulative-as well as unique-contributions to children's emotion regulation. We considered the 2 components that have recently been distinguished: emotion regulation and emotional lability. We predicted that mothers' beliefs about the value of and contempt for children's emotions, mothers' supportive and nonsupportive reactions to their children's emotions, as well as mothers' use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression of their own emotions would each contribute unique variance to their children's emotion regulation and lability, as assessed by children's teachers. The study sample consisted of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of 165 mothers and their third-grade children. Different patterns emerged for regulation and lability: Controlling for family income, child gender, and ethnicity, only mothers' lack of suppression as a regulatory strategy predicted greater emotion regulation in children, whereas mothers' valuing of children's emotions, mothers' lack of contempt for children's emotions, mothers' use of cognitive reappraisal to reinterpret events, and mothers' lack of emotional suppression predicted less lability in children. These findings support the divergence of emotion regulation and lability as constructs and indicate that, during middle childhood, children's lability may be substantially and uniquely affected by multiple forms of parental socialization.

Cross-sectional studies support negative associations between children’s skills in recognizing emotional expressions and their problem behaviors. Few studies have examined these associations over time, however, precluding our understanding of the direction of effects. Emotion recognition difficulties may contribute to the development of problem behaviors; additionally, problem behaviors may constrain the development of emotion recognition skill. The present study tested the bidirectional linkages between children’s emotion recognition and teacher-reported problem behaviors in 1(st) and 3(rd) grade. Specifically, emotion recognition, hyperactivity, internalizing behaviors, and externalizing behaviors were assessed in 117 children in 1(st) grade and in 3(rd) grade. Results from fully cross-lagged path models revealed divergent developmental patterns: Controlling for concurrent levels of problem behaviors and first-grade receptive language skills, lower emotion recognition in 1(st) grade significantly predicted greater internalizing behaviors, but not hyperactivity or externalizing behaviors, in 3(rd) grade. Moreover, greater hyperactivity in 1(st) grade marginally predicted lower emotion recognition in 3(rd) grade, but internalizing and externalizing behaviors were not predictive of emotion recognition over time. Together, these findings extend previous research to identify specific developmental pathways, whereby emotion recognition difficulties contribute to the development of internalizing behaviors, and early hyperactivity may contribute to the development of emotion recognition difficulties, thus highlighting the importance of examining these processes and their mutual development over time.

Theoretical 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.

Parents’ 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.

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school-aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion-related beliefs, behaviours, and skills. We examined parents' beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents' emotion labelling and teaching behaviours, and parents' skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school-aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty-nine parent–child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents' beliefs, behaviours, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age-related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The field of emotion understanding is replete with measures, yet lacks an integrated conceptual organizing structure. To identify and organize skills associated with the recognition and knowledge of emotions, and to highlight the focus of emotion understanding as localized in the self, in specific others, and in generalized others, we introduce the conceptual framework of Emotion Understanding in Recognition and Knowledge Abilities (EUReKA). We then categorize 56 existing methods of emotion understanding within this framework to highlight current gaps and future opportunities in assessing emotion understanding across the lifespan. We hope the EUReKA model provides a systematic and integrated framework for conceptualizing and measuring emotion understanding for future research.