The Relationships between Parental Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Children's Emotional Understanding : Mediated Pathways by Children's Internal Working Models of Attachment Relationship

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Preschoolers’ ability to understand their own and others’ emotions, one of the most essential factors for emotional competence, is developed and elaborated by abundant experiences of emotional interactions with their parents. This study was launched to examine how the emotional understanding of children is influenced by six specific parental reactions to children’s negative emotional expressions. Within the framework of attachment theory, it was hypothesized that children’s security of attachment relationships mediates the relationship between parental reactions to children’s negative emotions and children’s emotional understanding.
This mediation model was tested through eight hypotheses based on data obtained from 63 four-year-old Korean children (36 boys and 27 girls) and their mothers and fathers who live in Seoul and its vicinity. Children were interviewed at school using the Attachment Story Completion Task and the Puppet Task that evaluate their types of attachment and levels of emotional understanding, respectively. Each parent completed two self-report questionnaires for parental reactions and emotional expressiveness at home. To administer the original scales to Korean participants, each scale was translated into Korean, and refined through back-translation procedures, pilot studies, and factor analysis until it reached acceptable levels of validity and reliability.
The data analysis using hierarchical multiple regression resulted in two major findings. First, children’s ability to understand emotions was significantly predicted by their attachment security (secure vs. insecure). However, this relationship existed only in boys’ data. For girls, there was no significant relationship between emotional understanding and attachment security. As a result, the initial model poorly fit the current data, and it was necessary to propose a revised model that contains only one substantial path between children’s emotional understanding and their attachment security.
This study provided empirical evidence for the connection between the quality of early parent-child relationship and the child’s emotional outcome using Korean samples. However, the conclusion regarding gender differences in this relationship is tentative. Due to yet inconsistent results across studies, future research may focus on establishing a reliable conclusion on the gender difference in more ecologically and culturally valid settin

목차 (Table of Contents)

• ABSTRACT = ⅰ
• TABLE OF CONTENTS = ⅲ
• LIST OF TABLES = ⅶ
• LIST OF FIGURES = ⅷ
• CHAPTER Ⅰ : INTRODUCTION = 1
• CHAPTER Ⅱ : LITERATURE REVIEW = 8
• A. Conceptualization of emotional understanding = 8
• B. Conceptualization of parental reactions = 11
• C. Influences of parental reactions on children's emotional understanding = 13
• Positive influences = 14
• Negative influences = 16
• Specific vs. global types of parental reactions = 17
• D. Theoretical background = 19
• Formation of internal working models = 19
• Differences in internal working models of attachment relationships = 21
• Influence of internal working models on emotional understanding = 23
• E. Mediator and Moderator variables = 26
• Mediator = 26
• Moderator = 27
• Gender differences = 28
• The Influence of Korean cuture on gender differences = 31
• F. Research questions and hypotheses = 33
• CHAPTER Ⅲ : METHOD = 37
• A. Sample = 37
• Sampling procedure = 38
• Sample size and non-respondent error = 38
• Demographic characteristics of the sample = 39
• Representativeness of the sample = 42
• B. Procedures = 43
• Parents' questionnaires = 43
• Children's interview = 44
• C. Creating Korean versions of the Measures = 46
• Issue of cross-cultural content validity = 46
• Translation procedure = 47
• D. Validating Korean measures = 49
• A measure of the independent variable : the Korean version of the Coping with Children's Negative Emotion Scales (CCNES) = 49
• A measure of the dependent variable : the Korean version of the Puppet Task = 51
• A measure of the mediator variable : the Korean version of the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) = 54
• A measure for validity testing : the Korean version of the Self Expressiveness Family Questionnaire (SEFQ) = 58
• CHAPTER Ⅳ : RESULTS = 61
• Methodological consideration = 62
• A. Preliminary Data analysis = 63
• Parental reactions to children's negative emotions (IV) = 63
• Children's emotional understanding (DV) = 64
• Children's security of attachment (MeV) = 67
• Correlations between demographic and main variables = 68
• Correlations among three main variables = 71
• Independent samples t-test = 74
• B. Hypotheses Tests = 75
• Path 1. The relationships of parental reactions to children's negative emotions (IV) with children's emotional understanding (DV) = 75
• Path 2. The relationships of parental reactions to children's negative emotions (IV) with children's security of attachment (MeV) = 77
• Path 3. The relationships of children's security of attachment (MeV) with children's emotional understanding (DV) = 79
• CHAPTER Ⅴ : DISCUSSION = 84
• A. Summary of findings = 85
• B. Discussion of research findings = 86
• A significant relationship between children's security of attachment and children's emotional understanding = 86
• Gender differences = 89
• No relationship between parental reactions to children's negative emotions and children's emotional understanding = 91
• C. Contributions = 94
• Cultural validity = 94
• Gender difference = 95
• Scale refinement = 96
• D. Limitations of this study and suggestions for future research = 96
• Methods of study = 96
• Questions for future study = 99
• REFERENCES = 102
• Appendix A = 114
• Appendix B = 117
• Appendix C = 118
• Appendix D = 146
• Appendix E = 166
• Appendix F = 172
• Appendix G = 173
• Appendix H = 175
• Appendix I = 181
• Appendix J = 182
• Appendix K = 187