Testing TIK (Tuning in to Kids) with TEC (Test of Emotion Comprehension): Does enhanced emotion socialization improve child emotion understanding?

This study examined the predictive link between enhanced parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) and children's emotional understanding. Parental ERSBs were enhanced using the Tuning in to Kids (TIK; Havighurst & Harley, 2007) parenting intervention, and children's emotional understanding was directly assessed using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons & Harris, 2000). 40 children in their final year of kindergarten and one of their parents participated in the study. TIK led to positive changes in parental expressive encouragement. All children showed statistically significant improvements in emotion understanding at six-month follow-up. As expected, parental expressive encouragement positively predicted children's development of emotional understanding from baseline to follow-up. Thus, when parents encouraged children to talk about emotions, children's emotional understanding improved. Unexpectedly, emotion-focused responses (warm but dismissive) negatively predicted children's development of emotion understanding, Children's emotional understanding did not improve as much when parents responded with comfort and distraction. Implications are discussed.