Essay on Maternal Emotional Expressiveness Effects on Childrens Development of Knowledge of Display Rules

Name of the article: maternal emotional expressiveness affects preschool childrens development of knowledge of display rules.

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Source: Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal (2007)

Brief overview

This purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of maternal expressiveness on the childs development knowledge for display rules among the Chinese preschool kids. The authors (XIXIAN WU, YIFANG WANG, and AIZHEN LIU) conducted an evaluation of knowledge development display rules that governs the preschool children of ages below five years and how it relates to their mothers emotional expression. The research was conducted using a sample population of 181 children and mothers from China origin. Testing on children was carried out personally using six scenario stories while that of mothers was a complete evaluation that assessed their personal expressions within the family setting (Surtees and Apperly, 2012). The result of the evaluation indicated that positive expressions of mothers was very critical and had a positive impact on childs display knowledge of rules. However, the negative expressiveness of mothers does not influence the childs display knowledge. Moreover, display knowledge of children indicated a significant improved between childrens of different ages. This is an indication that mothers have the responsibility of regularly expressing positive emotions to enhance their childrens development of display knowledge rules. This research found that age is an integral aspect in improving childrens display knowledge as supported by the previous studies (Surtees and Apperly, 2012). High possibilities are that the understanding of a child about apparent and real emotions has a close relationship to their ability to make distinctions between reality and appearance of physical actions and objects. This argument is based on the theory of mind development.

Reaction

Egocentrism during childhood is the state of childrens perspective of the real world thus making a denial that other views are valid. The level of egocentrism varies depending on the childs age, with children under three years having a high state of egocentrism. However, children at the ages of 4 and five years mainly engage themselves in emotional and social experiences by communicating with parents, teachers and fellow peers; these group of children has low egocentric states. Expressiveness can be identified as the continuous style of expressing both verbal and non-verbal communications that have a close relationship with personal emotions. Moreover, family expressiveness is an indication of environmental emotions related to a particular family and can be considered as a significant aspect that influences a childs regulation of the emotions. Responses from children can grade children knowledge of display rules. Proper identification of real and apparent emotions indicates a score of 2. However, the inconsistent clear and real emotions lead to a score of 2 but having proper identification of real emotions can result in a score of 2. Other responses could result in a score of zero. However, the negative expression of mothers does not have a direct link to a childs knowledge of display rules. Since the current research did not identify any adverse significance relationship between parents and their childrens negative expressiveness by knowledge display rules, mothers are supposed to have a little negative expression within the home setting for the purpose of reducing any different effects on their emotional development. However, the research was limited in some ways in that the sample population was small based on the participants grouping of ages and gender as this can result to ineffective statistical validity. This could lead in a bad analysis of gender differences in the study. Increasing the sample population in future would ensure that the result of the research is credible. Another important limitation that identified in the research was the maternal expressiveness that was examined using a self-report that resulted to mothers influencing the awareness and self-reflection levels. As a result, the researchers instead could have implemented a behavioral measure approach that would ensure that mothers spontaneous emotional responsiveness and expression are adequately recorded using some hidden cameras and then rated by a team of judges. Comparing the results of both current and previous research, evidence indicates that knowledge development of display rules is continuous procedure throughout the childs development until they reach the school entry age. A wider age range would be an important aspect of the future research on investigating knowledge development of display rules in a more comprehensive way. However, much care is needed while utilizing assessment methods that much suits the ages of the participants. Mothers are identified as the primary caregivers in a family. Thus, both negative expressiveness and maternal positivity are considered as indexes of a familys emotional environment, and its very substantial for childrens mental health and also provides preschoolers with an opportunity to learn more about emotional regulation and expression. Centrally to the western communities where parents are advised to express their emotions in a direct manner freely, the Chinese community considers emotional expressiveness to be implicit for the purpose of avoiding inappropriate emotion expression.

Works cited

Surtees, A. D. R., & Apperly, I. A. (2012). Egocentrism and automatic perspective taking in children and adults. Child Development, 83, 452460. http://doi.org/bhzj