Emotion discourse and attachment in middle childhood

Past attachment research has shown that early interactions between caregivers and children form the foundations for children's future relationships (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Secure attachment is built around sensitive caregiving styles that promote children's use of emotion discourse. Research on family emotion discourse has shown that the frequency of mothers' emotional references and explanations within these interactions is positively related to children's emotion understanding as well as their frequency of emotion discourse (Laible & Thompson, 2000; Raikes & Thomspon, 2006). Few studies have concurrently examined children's attachment and emotion discourse, and those that have been published have largely focused on early childhood. The present study examined children's emotion discourse and attachment in middle childhood. It was expected that children with more secure attachments and whose parents frequently discussed emotion would show more emotion discourse during an emotion-eliciting task. Twenty children between the ages of 8- and 12- years and their parents came to a laboratory where children viewed a 30-minute video of pictures paired with stories that contained emotional themes. Children and parents then engaged in a parent-child conversation. Emotion discourse was measured by summing the total amount of emotion words used during the parent-child conversation. Both parents' and children's attachment were also assessed. Results showed a significant positive correlation between children's and parents' emotion discourse. These results indicate that parents who used more emotion discourse had children who also used more emotion discourse. No other significant relations were found between children's attachment security and emotion discourse (parents and children). Implications of the present findings are discussed in addition to suggestions for future research.