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https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/50631/parental-influence-on-child-social-and-emotional-functioning

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About this Research Topic

Manuscript Submission Deadline 28 May 2023

Social and emotional functioning (interpersonal interactions, social adjustment, emotional well-being, and mental health) among children and adolescents has drawn growing attention from academics, practitioners, parents, educators, and policymakers. Worldwide, it is agreed that social and emotional ...

Social and emotional functioning (interpersonal interactions, social adjustment, emotional well-being, and mental health) among children and adolescents has drawn growing attention from academics, practitioners, parents, educators, and policymakers. Worldwide, it is agreed that social and emotional development is a result of individual-context interactions. Particularly, socialization perspectives regard parenting as the primary factor that shapes child and adolescent development to a large extent. Meanwhile, the ecological perspective highlights the bi-directional nature of interactions between children and parents by which they affect each other. Parenting can be parents' active socialization actions that influence their children's development (i.e., parent effect); it can also be parents' reactions to their children's social and emotional functioning (i.e., child effect). Despite a large number of local, national, or international empirical studies in this field, some questions are still open for discussion, such as parenting in different contexts (e.g., disadvantaged situations or different cultures), the interplay between parenting and other factors in family dynamics (e.g., sibling relationship) or other socialization forces (e.g., schooling) as well as the under-researched child effect on parenting.

This Research Topic aims to allow researchers in different fields (e.g., education, psychology, or social work) to exchange both theoretical discussions and empirical practices regarding the relationship between parenting and the child's social and emotional development, which can enrich theoretical literature in the field and offer insights for the design of effective intervention programs in different contexts to promote child social and emotional functioning.

Specifically, the Research Topic concentrates on four research questions:

1) What are the parent effect and child effect regarding parenting and child and adolescent social and emotional functioning in different cultures, especially among under-researched populations (e.g., poor families or single-parent families)?
2) What are the theories and underlying processes (mediators or moderators) involved in the above-mentioned parent effect and/or child effect?
3) What is the potential interplay between parenting and other factors, such as teacher, peer, and sibling influences?
4) What is the role of parenting training in evidence-based practices aiming to improve social and emotional functioning among children and adolescents?

We welcome quantitative studies (e.g., cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, cohort studies, interventions, and experimental studies), qualitative studies (e.g., interview studies, observational studies, content analyses, and case studies), mix-method studies, and review studies.

Keywords: parenting, parent-child relationship, family, social adjustment, emotional skill, social interaction, emotional well-being, children and adolescent mental health

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Topic Editors

Topic Coordinators

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Parental Influence on Child Social and Emotional Functioning

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Social and emotional functioning (interpersonal interactions, social adjustment, emotional well-being, and mental health) among children and adolescents has drawn growing attention from academics, practitioners, parents, educators, and policymakers. Worldwide, it is agreed that social and emotional development is a result of individual-context interactions.

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https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2016.00015

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Abstract

One way in which we figure out how people are feeling is by looking at their faces. Being able to do this allows us to react in the right way in social situations. But, are young children good at recognizing facial expressions showing emotion? And how does this ability develop throughout childhood and the teenage years? Children are able to recognize certain emotions very well when they are just 6 years old, but become better at recognizing other emotions as they grow older. At all ages, girls seem to have less difficulty than boys in recognizing emotions. Hormones that our bodies produce at puberty do not only influence how our bodies develop but also influence how our brains develop and how we change emotionally. Understanding more about the typical development of emotion recognition can guide us in helping children who have difficulties with these skills.

Introduction

Have you ever thought about how you can tell what somebody else is feeling? Sometimes, friends might tell you that they are feeling happy or sad but, even if they do not tell you, I am sure that you would be able to make a good guess about what kind of mood they are in. You might get a clue from the tone of voice that they use. For example, they may raise their voice if they are angry or talk in a shaky way if they are scared. The other main clue you might use to tell what a friend is feeling would be to look at his or her facial expression. We have lots of muscles in our faces which enable us to move our face into lots of different positions. This happens spontaneously (without us planning for it to happen) when we feel a particular emotion. Look away from this article and try to make your face look how it would if you were feeling sad. Have you turned down your mouth and maybe looked down with your head and eyes? Isn't it amazing that the way we feel makes our faces behave in a particular way?

Scientists have discovered that, all across the world, humans tend to display the same expressions in response to various emotions. So, if you looked at an Eskimo from Canada, a school child from the USA, or a farmer from India, their facial expressions would look very similar if they were feeling sad. There are set patterns for how the facial muscles move, and therefore how the face looks, that are the same across different countries, cultures, and ethnicities. This was demonstrated over 40 years ago by scientists Ekman and Friesen [] and has been confirmed many times since. All across the world, the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise are shown on our faces in similar ways (see Figure 1). The ability to recognize how somebody might be feeling is a very important skill in life, as it enables us to respond appropriately in social situations with our family, friends, teachers, and even strangers.

Figure 1 - Children from different countries, cultures, and ethnicities use the same facial expressions to show emotions.

What are these children feeling? Credit: http://streetsill.com

Do you think we are born able to recognize facial expressions or that this is a skill we learn as we grow, in a similar way to how we might learn to talk or read or write? Well, to some extent, the answer is a bit of each. Scientists have done experiments with babies as young as 7 months old to show that when they look at two faces with different facial expressions, they are able to tell the difference between the two expressions. Some of you may be thinking, "how do the scientists know that the babies can tell the difference, if they can't talk?" Good question! One of the ways they do this is to measure the time that babies look at different types of facial expressions. Babies will look at certain facial expressions (for example, fear) longer than others. This increased amount of time spent looking tells us that the babies can see a difference between different facial expressions. However, the ability to accurately say which emotion someone is feeling based on their facial expression improves a lot between early childhood and adulthood. Although we have some ability to do this early on in life, we get much better at this skill as we grow older. The researchers Herba and Phillips [] discuss this in their 2004 review of the topic.

Even though lots of scientific studies have been conducted looking at the ability to recognize emotions, there are no previous studies that look at emotion recognition abilities in children from 6 to 16 years using the same test with all children. Some studies have used techniques that ask children to match faces to the names of emotions. Other tests make complicated emotions by combining pictures of two different facial expressions and determine children's ability to judge which of the two emotions is shown. We felt it was important to look at a large age range using the same test on all children, because in order to understand how an ability develops, it is important that you are making fair and balanced comparisons.

Why is it important to know how good children are at recognizing facial expressions? You may think this is a rather boring topic to study. There are two main reasons this interests us. First, it is important to understand how and when this skill develops in childhood, so that we will know whether children are similar to adults in figuring out how people are feeling. If children are not as good at telling how people are feeling from their facial expressions, it might be helpful for parents or teachers to give the children extra clues. For example, maybe a teacher should not only give the class an angry look but also explain to the class that she is feeling angry because they would not stop talking. Second, not all children develop the ability to recognize emotions in the typical way, and this can have a big impact on how they are able to get along with people. We sometimes see difficulties recognizing emotions in children with behavior problems and those with autism. Furthermore, Collin and others [] reported that children with a wide range of mental health difficulties (from attention deficit hyperactivity disorders to eating disorders) can experience difficulties recognizing emotion from facial expressions. If we are able to find out how children generally score on emotion recognition tests, then we can identify those children who have difficulties and provide them with extra help in developing these skills. In a similar way to a child who receives additional help because they have difficulty reading books, we might be able to offer help to children who have difficulty in reading faces.

Study

For our study, we tested 478 children from primary schools (aged 6-11 years) and secondary schools (aged 11-16 years) within the UK. Their parents gave permission for them to take part in the study. A computerized version of an emotion recognition test, which was designed by Ekman and Friesen [], was developed for this study, which asked children to choose the emotion they thought people were feeling based pictures of facial expressions. Sixty pictures of faces (10 of each emotion) were shown one at a time on a computer screen (see Figure 2 for some examples). For each face, children clicked on the emotion label (happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, or surprised) that best described what they thought the person in the picture was feeling. Each child got a score (out of 100) for recognizing the emotions shown in the facial expressions.

Figure 2 - Different facial expressions of emotion from the test created by Ekman and Friesen [4] and used in our study.

Results

When we looked at the results from the tests we made some interesting discoveries. First, we found that children as young as 6 years old are able to correctly recognize facial expressions some of the time. However, as children get older they become consistently better at recognizing facial expressions (see Figure 3). Another interesting finding was that girls seemed to find this test easier than boys and judged more of the emotions correctly. This means that, on the whole, girls have an easier time knowing what people might be feeling based on their facial expressions.

Figure 3 - Line graph showing emotion recognition accuracy for boys and girls.

Accuracy improves across childhood and adolescence and girls are more accurate than boys at all ages.

Do you think it would be equally easy to recognize whether somebody is feeling sad or whether they are feeling fearful? The results of this study suggest it is not. Really, young children are very good at recognizing some facial expressions. The emotions of happiness, sadness, and anger were recognized almost as well by the 6 year olds as they were by the 16 year olds! This tells us that, even as a young child, you were probably quite good at telling when your mum was angry with you, just by looking at her face. I am sure you can picture the look now! However, other expressions (such as fear, disgust, and surprise) seem a bit trickier to figure out, and our ability to recognize these emotions improves throughout childhood and the teenage years ( Figure 4).

Figure 4 - Chart showing that the ability to recognize different emotions develops at different ages.

Emotion symbols are shown when children at that age can accurately recognize that emotion 7 out of 10 times. The emotions examined are listed in the key.

One factor that may influence the improvement in recognizing emotions during the teenage years is the hormones that your body produces. As you grow from a child into an adult, your body changes in various ways and these changes are caused by hormones which are released in your body. The process is called puberty. The hormones released make you grow taller and your body become more adult-like in its appearance, but did you know that these hormones also affect how your brain develops? Scientists who study the brain [] have found that changes in the way the brain develops during puberty are related to changes in behavior. Brain cells re-organize their connections with each other during this time and it is possible that, during this reorganization, our ability to recognize emotions gets a little worse before it starts to improve (see Figure 3). Even though young children in our study were good at recognizing angry faces, they got even better at it during the teenage years. We found that the ability of children and teenagers to recognize facial expressions of anger and disgust was related to the stage of puberty they were in. Those children who were more developed in terms of their puberty were significantly better at recognizing anger and disgust than those who were in an earlier stage of puberty. This suggests to us that the same hormones that produce the physical changes associated with puberty also cause changes in your brain that improve your ability to recognize certain emotions. Not only do the hormones make you become more adult-like physically but they also help you to become more adult-like emotionally too.

Conclusion

In our research, we wanted to understand the development of facial emotion recognition skills throughout childhood and the teenage years. Our study has shown us that:

Children as young as 6 years old are good at recognizing expressions of happiness, sadness, and anger.

We get better at recognizing other emotions as we get older.

Our ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion improves throughout childhood and the teenage years.

Girls seem to have less difficulty than boys at recognizing facial expressions of emotion.

Children improve in their ability to recognize expressions of anger and disgust as they move through puberty.

These results are interesting because they tell us more than we previously knew about how the ability to recognize facial expressions develops through childhood and the teenage years. This information could be useful for people who work with children and teenagers. The results from the study could be used to compare the emotion recognition skills of any young person, aged between 6 and 16 years, to other children their age. In this way, children who have difficulties in recognizing facial expressions could be identified in the same way that children who have difficulties with reading may be identified using reading tests.

Our ability to recognize emotions in other people has a big impact on how well we are able to get along with people in social situations. A difficulty in this skill could lead to problems in making and keeping friendships, getting along with others, and behaving appropriately in social situations. Children identified with difficulties in emotion recognition could potentially receive extra support to help develop these skills, which may help them cope better in social situations. Next time you look at someone and think you know what they are feeling just from how their face looks, think how difficult it would be if you could not use information from faces in this way. Just like having problems reading books, having difficulties reading faces can make life pretty tricky at times. The more we can find out about this skill, the more we can help people who may have problems with emotion recognition.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by The National Alliance for Autism Research and the Nancie Lurie Marks Family Foundation. Many thanks to Paul Ekman for providing the faces for the study and to the schools and children involved, who gave their time so enthusiastically. Finally, we are very grateful to Kate's sons, Jack and Luke, for their brilliant advice and editorial input on this article.

Original Article Reference

↑ Lawrence, K., Campbell, R., and Skuse, D. 2015. Age, gender, and puberty influence the development of facial emotion recognition. Front. Psychol. 6:761. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00761

References

[1] ↑ Ekman, P., and Friesen, W. V. 1971. Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 17(2):124-9. doi:10.1037/h0030377

[2] ↑ Herba, C., and Phillips, M. 2004. Annotation: development of facial expression recognition from childhood to adolescence: behavioural and neurological perspectives. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 45(7):1185-98. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00316.x

[3] ↑ Collin, L., Bindra, J., Raju, M., Gillberg, C., and Minnis, H. 2013. Facial emotion recognition in child psychiatry: a systematic review. Res. Dev. Disabil. 34(5):1505-20. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.01.008

[4] ↑ Ekman, P., and Friesen, W. V. 1976. Pictures of Facial Affect. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

[5] ↑ Mills, K., Goddings, A., and Blakemore, S. 2014. Drama in the teenage brain. Front. Young Minds 2:16. doi:10.3389/frym.2014.00016

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One way in which we figure out how people are feeling is by looking at their faces. Being able to do this allows us to react in the right way in social situations. But, are young children good at recognizing facial expressions showing emotion? And how does this ability develop throughout childhood and the teenage years?

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01145/full

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Institute for Sport Science, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Department for Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Intuitively, it is obvious that emotions and feelings influence our behavior. Therefore, it can be assumed that activities we like will be pursued with greater engagement and persistence than activities we do not like. When people feel good during or after physical activity, it can be expected that they will be more prone to repeat that behavior.

Despite this apparent relationship, affective states have been long ignored as a possible determinant of physical activity. In the last 15 years, however, the interest of researchers in affective determinants of physical activity erratically increased. Two reviews and meta-analyses have been conducted to summarize the empirical evidence for this relationship showing that only few longitudinal studies with remarkable methodological shortcomings exist ( Rhodes et al., 2009; Rhodes and Kates, 2015). Furthermore, these reviews reveal that the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. For example, in 19 out of 20 identified experimental studies in the meta-analysis by Rhodes et al. (2009) affective variables were not influenced by the current intervention strategies. Only few studies used interventions explicitly targeting emotions and affective states to increase exercise adherence ( Jekauc, 2015). Overall, it can be concluded that some empirical endeavors exist to analyze the role of affective states as determinants of physical activity but there are no fruitful theoretical frameworks to inspire research. The aim of this Research Topic is to make a contribution to close this research gap. It yielded 16 articles embedded in five strands of research. Firstly, three articles examined the role of affective variables within the scope of the social-cognitive perspective. Secondly, two articles proposed new theoretical approaches to understand the affective mechanisms in promotion of physical activity. Thirdly, four articles examined the determinants of affective variables. Fourthly, five articles examined the effects of affective variables on consecutive physical activity on a daily level using the methodology of ambulatory assessment. Fifthly, two articles examined non-conscious mechanisms by studying automatic evaluations. These five research strands are presented below.

One reason for the above mentioned shortage of theoretical development is that social-cognitive models dominated physical activity research for several decades ( Jekauc et al., 2015). These models focused on cognitive mechanisms and neglected the role of affective states and emotions. More recently, researchers operating within the scope of social-cognitive perspective began to examine the role of affective variables. Klusmann et al. examined the role of emotional outcome expectancies within the framework of social-cognitive models and found that fulfillment of emotional outcome expectancies emerges as a significant predictor of adoption and maintenance of physical activity. Furthermore, two studies examined the role and the interdependencies of affective variables and self-efficacy in physical activity setting. Ungar et al. show that physical activity enjoyment was as strong predictor of physical activity level as self-efficacy in cancer patients. This study suggests that physical activity enjoyment has an independent and equal effect on physical activity level as self-efficacy. At the same time, Matsuo et al. provide evidence that post-exercise self-efficacy is related to subjective and objective measures of affectivestates indicating that self-efficacy and affective states are mutually dependent on each other. These three studies suggest that the effects of affective variables on physical activity are independent of self-efficacy whereas they both interact with each other at the same time. These studies imply that theoretical developments to extend social-cognitive models might be a promising way to examine the role of emotions and affects in physical activity maintenance.

Within the scope of this Research Topic, alternative theoretical approaches have been developed to understand the role of affective variables on physical activity. Lee et al. propose an evolutionary perspective hypothesizing that affective response to exercise will be more positive when the perceived immediate utility of the physical activity is high. The authors argue that promotion of activities which have an inherent utility like walking for transportation could be an effective strategy to increase physical activity levels. Furthermore, Murphy and Eaves discuss the hedonic perspective to explain the effects of affective variable on physical activity and point to the indiscriminant use of hedonistic terms in different areas of psychology and philosophy. Both perspectives provide innovative ideas which could be fertile for development of new intervention approaches beyond social-cognitive models.

A group of researchers examined with different methodological approaches the determinants of affective variables. Wienke and Jekauc examined the conditions of exercise under which enjoyment and positive emotions emerge. They discovered four factors, "perceived competence," "social interaction," "novelty experience," and "perceived physical exertion" which are associated with positive emotions. Independently, Sudeck et al. examined how two of these factors "perception of competence" and "perceived exertion" as well as "affective response to exercise" influence the development of affective attitude. The authors found out that perceptions of competence have a direct effect on changes in affective attitude whereas the effect of perceived exertion was indirect via positive activation influences on the development of affective attitude. Furthermore, Pilcher and Baker showed that physical activity at work on a stationary bike with a low level of exertion led to increases in positive affective states compared with the traditional work situation of sitting at an office desk. This study illustrates that low intensity physical activity at an active workstation increases positive feelings during work without having a negative effect on cognitive tasks. Rhodes and Mistry examined the reasons for anticipated regret over missing regular physical activity. The authors identified three dominating themes "missed opportunity to obtain the benefits of physical activity," "shame and guilt for not being able to follow-through with one's goals," and "perceived pressure from others." These studies can be used as a starting point for the development of innovative emotion-based interventions to promote physical activity.

An innovative methodological approach that examines the relationship between physical activity and affective states on a daily basis is the ambulatory assessment method. In a review conducted by Liao et al., six studies were identified that examined the relationship between affective states and subsequent physical activity. The findings suggest that positive affective states, for a few hours afterwards, were positively associated with physical activity while negative affective states had no significant association. These findings were confirmed in the studies by Niermann et al., Schöndube et al., Reichert et al., and Kanning and Schoebi which consistently showed that positive feelings and moods were positively associated with subsequent physical activity. In contrast to the findings of Liao et al., Niermann et al. found that negative affect decreased subsequent MVPA. This number of studies reflects the usefulness of the ambulatory assessment method for the examination of the relationship between affective states and physical activity. It illustrates how technological developments influence research in physical activity.

Another theoretical approach exceeding social-cognitive models represents the analysis of non-conscious processes such as automatic evaluations. Antoniewicz and Brand discovered that automatic evaluations of exercise at the beginning of an exercise program significantly predicts exercise adherence in the upcoming months. The study reveals the significance of non-conscious processes for maintenance of physical activity. Furthermore, Rebar et al. establish population-level evidence of the most common word stimuli for physical activity and pleasantness. These can be used as resources for response latency measurement tasks of automatic evaluations and as tools to enhance automatic evaluations of physical activity in evaluative conditioning tasks.

The aim of this Research Topic was to stimulate and pool systematic research on the role of emotions and feelings as predictors of physical activity. Several theoretical and empirical works contributed toward deepening the understanding of the working mechanisms.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

Jekauc, D. (2015). Enjoyment during exercise mediates the effects of an intervention on exercise adherence. Psychology 6, 48-54. doi: 10.4236/psych.2015.61005

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Jekauc, D., Völkle, M., Wagner, M. O., Mess, F., Reiner, M., and Renner, B. (2015). Prediction of attendance at fitness center: a comparison between the theory of planned behavior, the social cognitive theory, and the physical activity maintenance theory. Front. Psychol. 6:121. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00121

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Rhodes, R. E., Fiala, B., and Conner, M. (2009). A review and meta-analysis of affective judgments and physical activity in adult populations. Ann. Behav. Med. 38, 180-204. doi: 10.1007/s12160-009-9147-y

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Rhodes, R. E., and Kates, A. (2015). Can the affective response to exercise predict future motives and physical activity behavior? A systematic review of published evidence. Ann. Behav. Med. 49, 715-731. doi: 10.1007/s12160-015-9704-5

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Keywords: physical activity, exercise, emotions, feelings, affect, regulation, implicit, enjoyment

Citation: Jekauc D and Brand R (2017) Editorial: How do Emotions and Feelings Regulate Physical Activity? Front. Psychol. 8:1145. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01145

Received: 18 March 2017; Accepted: 22 June 2017;
Published: 11 July 2017.

Edited and reviewed by: Guy Cheron, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Copyright © 2017 Jekauc and Brand. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Darko Jekauc, darko.jekauc@hu-berlin.de

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Editorial: How do Emotions and Feelings Regulate Physical Activity?

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Intuitively, it is obvious that emotions and feelings influence our behavior. Therefore, it can be assumed that activities we like will be pursued with greater engagement and persistence than activities we do not like. When people feel good during or after physical activity, it can be expected that they will be more prone to repeat that behavior.

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