The Role of Children’s Emotion Word Knowledge on the Links Between Parent Emotion Socialization and Child Outcomes

Emotion dysregulation is a well-established risk factor for developing psychopathology. By socializing emotion knowledge in children, parents may improve emotion understanding and regulation. This preregistered study posits emotion word knowledge as a key feature of emotion understanding. Using structural equation modeling with 250 caregiver-child dyads, we examined indirect effects of implicit parental emotion socialization (emotion regulation difficulties and emotional expressivity) on children’s (aged 4-7) emotion regulation and psychopathology through emotion word knowledge. There were unique effects of parental positive and negative submissive expressivity on children’s emotion regulation. The effect of parental dysregulation on children’s psychopathology was mediated by children’s lability. Implicit emotion socialization was unrelated to children’s emotion word knowledge. Results represent the first evidence that emotion word knowledge predicts improved emotion regulation; however, regulation did not buffer against psychopathology at this age. An alternative model in which emotion regulation predicted emotion word knowledge did not adequately fit the data.