While intervention and prevention efforts recognize the importance of understanding one's own experience of emotion in the development of social competence, the basic developmental pathways leading to the emergence of emotion monitoring (EM) have not been examined. Understanding the mechanisms and contexts contributing to successful EM can inform and improve these essential intervention programs. The overarching goals of this work are to explore the developmental processes leading to EM, and relate children's meta-emotional development to other key emotional competencies (e.g., emotion regulation). Using a short-term longitudinal framework, the proposed investigation focuses specifically on the precursors of EM. Child temperament is expected to moderate the socialization influence of the parent (e.g., emotion talk, emotional expressiveness) on the development of EM. EM ability in children will be examined in 2 contexts, using a multi-method approach in a sample of 150 predominately White children. Measures of parent and child characteristics (questionnaire data), and parental socialization of emotion (questionnaire and observational data) will be collected at 4.5 years. Child EM outcome measurements will be collected in two different emotion-eliciting contexts at 5.5 years, and will consist of non-verbal self reports and observed expression of emotion. Psychophysiologieal measurements will also be collected in the more arousing context. Cross-contextual comparisons will be made to examine the significance of the salience of the emotional event for EM in young children.
