First Advisor

Andrew Mashburn

Term of Graduation

Fall 2023

Date of Publication

12-6-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Psychology

Department

Psychology

Language

English

Subjects

Emotions in children, Interpersonal relations in children, African American children, Black children, Child psychology

DOI

10.15760/etd.3727

Physical Description

1 online resource (x, 190 pages)

Abstract

Close and high-quality relationships with teachers and peers are a significant, positive predictor of young children's academic and social-emotional skills, whereas early conflictual relationships can pose various short- and long-term socio-emotional and academic risks. Evidence also suggests that emotion knowledge, or the ways children identify, recognize, and apply emotional labels, are a crucial factor in children's early development including overcoming social-emotional challenges and fostering high-quality interpersonal relationships. Studies examining social relationships and emotion knowledge in early childhood, however, often reveal worrisome differences in between-group comparison designs. Particularly, minoritized children, and most often Black and African American, are associated with poorer rated emotion competencies, greater perceived dysregulation, and less close and more conflictual relationships with their teachers in comparison to their White or other affluent peers. Drawing from a sample of 124 Black and African American children, the current study employed a within-group design to examine the development of Black and African American children as they entered kindergarten. Children's early emotion knowledge was analyzed to 1) examine the hypothesized relationships between children's emotion knowledge and the development of children's interpersonal relationships with teachers and peers during kindergarten and 2) explore whether a feature of the classroom, namely, whether the level of chaos and structural support in the classroom, affected children's social relationships and the association between children's emotion knowledge and their social relationships. Despite the theoretical indications and empirical evidence suggesting that children's emotion knowledge impacts their interpersonal relationship quality, no clear or coherent patterns emerged from concurrent, developmental, or moderated models in support of the hypotheses. Implications regarding methodological practices are discussed, including suggestions for future approaches to research.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41679

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