Children’s Emotion Knowledge and Internalizing Problems: The Moderating Role of Culture

Abstract

This study examined in a cross-cultural context the prospective relation between children’s emotion knowledge and internalizing problems. European American ( N = 33) and immigrant Chinese children ( N = 22) and their mothers participated. Children’s emotion knowledge was assessed at three-and-a-half years of age using a task to elicit their understanding of situational antecedents of discrete emotions. Mothers reported on children’s internalizing problems using the Behavior Assessment System Children (BASC) when children were seven years of age. The relation of children’s emotion knowledge to internalizing problems was moderated by culture. Whereas early emotion knowledge was associated with decreased internalizing problems later on for European American children, it was associated with increased internalizing problems for immigrant Chinese children. The findings shed critical light on the different functional meanings of emotion knowledge across cultures.