Parents today face increasing challenges in managing children's media use, which are often accompanied by intense feelings of guilt. This study examines the prevalence and predictors of mother's parental media guilt surrounding their own and their child's media use. Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed data from 474 U.S. mothers (65% White, M child age = 7.48 yrs). Approximately half of mothers endorsed moderate or higher levels of guilt on several media guilt related items. Maternal guilt about their child's media use was significantly associated with higher maternal depression, lower media efficacy, and greater child problematic media use (PMU). In contrast, mothers' guilt over their own media use was associated with maternal depression and child PMU. Media content and screen time did not predict guilt levels. Younger maternal age predicted both types of guilt. Findings suggest that maternal media guilt is both common and complex and may be more closely tied to perceived parenting ideals and emotional well-being than to actual media behaviors.

This study examined longitudinal changes in parents' use of media to regulate their children's emotions (media emotion regulation; MER) and predictors of these patterns. A total of 587 parent-child dyads participated in annual assessments over six years, beginning when children were 2.5 years old and continuing until age 7.5. Parents reported on MER, parent and child problematic media use, parent anxiety, and parent depression. Latent growth curve modeling was used to evaluate developmental trends of MER. Overall, MER declined consistently across early childhood and higher initial MER was associated with lower parental education, greater parental anxiety, and higher parent and child problematic media use. Additionally, both higher initial MER and slower declines predicted greater child and parent problematic media use at the final wave. These findings point to the developmental nature of media emotion regulation and suggest that relying on media early and consistently for emotion regulation may be linked to later problematic media use within families.

This study used a five-wave longitudinal design to examine how the type and timing of parental questions during shared discussion of wordless picture books influence children's emotion labeling. Participants were 323 children (150 girls, ages 2-3 at Wave 1 in 2019) and their primary caregivers, who were assessed annually until ages 6-7. Parent-child interactions were recorded, transcribed, and coded for the frequency of yes/no and open-ended questions during the first conversational turn and children's subsequent correct emotion labels. An RI-CLPM controlling for conversation length, child age, and gender indicated that start-of-conversation open-ended questions were positively associated with children's correct emotion labeling, whereas start-of-conversation yes/no questions were negatively associated. Emotion labeling and parental questioning showed stability across waves; however, start-of-conversation question type did not predict children's labeling longitudinally. Moreover, a reverse longitudinal effect emerged: stronger child emotion labeling predicted decreases in parents' use of yes/no questions the following year, suggesting that parents adapt their entry prompts as children's skills improve. Sensitivity analyses showed that parent total question frequency across the full conversation was positively associated with labeling regardless of question type. These findings highlight the role of question type, timing, and caregiver responsiveness in socio-emotional development.

This study examined 5- to 6-year-old children's categorizations of and behaviors toward peers from different social classes. Participants were 193 children (Mage = 5.45 years, SD = 0.27; 102 boys, 91 girls) recruited from a diverse U.S. metropolitan area. Children completed a matching task using material cues (houses, cars, backpacks) and one-shot, third-party allocation and punishment tasks. Children successfully identified social class groups at a rate higher than chance and showed higher accuracy when identifying rich compared to poor peers. In allocation, children favored rich targets over poor targets, and this bias was associated with higher family income and lower parental education. Children punished both rich and poor peers above chance levels, and greater punishment was associated with higher family income, but not with target class. These findings show that early-school-age children can categorize others by social class using material cues and use these cues to guide their moral behavior toward others.

Despite calls for antiracism, research on potential links between parental socialization and anti-Black bias and behavior in young White children remains limited. With the goal of further informing evidence-based suggestions toward high-quality racial socialization in a dominant racial group, this study examined 5- to 6-year-old White children's (n = 123; 49% female; Mage = 5.46 years; MedianHousehold Income = $75,000-$100,000/year) potential racial bias in allocation and punishment behaviors toward White and Black peers. Results showed no differences in allocation by peer race. However, girls punished Black peers significantly less than White peers, whereas boys showed no difference. We also tested whether individual and parent characteristics were related to children's behaviors. Parents' lower color-evasive attitudes and lower household income were related to children's increased punishment of White compared to Black peers. Findings highlight gender differences in racial bias in young children, the importance of punishment behavior in the future study of children's racial bias, and the apparent, yet nuanced, links between parents' color-evasive attitudes and children's anti-Black punishment bias. We offer suggestions for parents and researchers.

This study examined the development of emotion understanding. Children ( N  = 296, 157 boys, 139 girls) and parents (67% White, 8% Black, 15% Hispanic, 2% Asian American, 6% Biracial, 2% “Other”) recruited from Denver, Colorado were observed annually for four years starting in 2019 (beginning M age  = 2.44 years, SD = 0.26) discussing a wordless storybook featuring illustrated emoters expressing joy, sadness, fear, anger, or disgust towards a referent (e.g., dropped ice cream). Analyses revealed changes and bidirectional relations in children's and parents' emoter talk and referent talk across early childhood, as well as differences in parent and child relative emoter-referent emphasis for discrete emotions. Implications for the ontogeny and socialization of young children's emotion understanding will be discussed.

IntroductionThis cross-sectional study proposes and validates a new measure of compulsive helping: helping which harms the helper.MethodsEmerging Adults (N = 438; Mage = 20.29, SD = 1.04, 51.71% Female) reported on compulsive helping. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess construct validity, while bivariate correlations were used to assess convergent and discriminant validity.ResultsConfirmatory factor analysis suggested convergent validity with all 10 items loading onto a single factor, with factor loadings above 0.44. Model fit was acceptable. Convergent validity was demonstrated such that compulsive helping was positively correlated with prosocial behavior and anxiety. Discriminant validity was demonstrated such that compulsive helping was negatively associated with self-regulation.ConclusionThis new concept and measure of compulsive helping is a first step toward defining the limits of the adaptiveness of prosocial behavior. Though not frequent, it appears helping which is harmful is not uncommon. Future research should employ qualitative means and consider the multidimensionality of prosocial behavior.

Evaluating others’ actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental aspect of human nature. A seminal study published in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluations based on third-party interactions emerges within the first year of life, considerably earlier than previously thought (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007). In this study, infants demonstrated a preference for a character (i.e., a shape with eyes) who helped, over one who hindered, another character who tried but failed to climb a hill. This study sparked a new line of inquiry into infants’ social evaluations; however, numerous attempts to replicate the original findings yielded mixed results, with some reporting effects not reliably different from chance. These failed replications point to at least two possibilities: (1) the original study may have overestimated the true effect size of infants’ preference for helpers, or (2) key methodological or contextual differences from the original study may have compromised the replication attempts. Here we present a pre-registered, closely coordinated, multi-laboratory, standardized study aimed at replicating the helping/hindering finding using a well-controlled video version of the hill show. We intended to (1) provide a precise estimate of the true effect size of infants’ preference for helpers over hinderers, and (2) determine the degree to which infants’ preferences are based on social features of the Helper/Hinderer scenarios. XYZ labs participated in the study yielding a total sample size of XYZ infants between the ages of 5.5 and 10.5 months. Brief summary of results will be added after data collection.

The purpose of this study was twofold, first, to examine potential changes in young children's media use starting a year prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2 years following onset (between 2½ and 4½ years of child age). Second, to examine links between children's screen time and their emerging regulatory functioning as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Participants (N = 269, 48% female at Wave 3) were drawn from Waves 3 to 5 of Project Media Effects on Development from Infancy to Adulthood, a longitudinal study on the impact of early media use on children's development. Parents reported children's time using media across different medium (e.g., television, tablets, book reading, smartphones). At Waves 3 and 5, children's baseline RSA was recorded in their homes. Results revealed an increase in nearly all forms of media during the first year of COVID-19 pandemic (W4) and decreases during year 2 (W5) with some but not all forms of media returning to W3 levels. A growth mixture model found two distinct classes of participants primarily across measures of socioeconomic status (SES). Higher levels of screen time pre-COVID-19 pandemic were linked to lower RSA 2 years later, regardless of SES. Protective factors were observed for children from lower SES families, including if they had higher income relative to other class members. Findings are framed in the context of displacement and polyvagal theory, suggesting that higher levels of media consumption early in life may displace opportunities that support children's emerging regulatory systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Responding to others' emotions entails the coordination of multiple behaviors. Yet, research on such responding typically analyses each behavior separately. We investigated the heterogeneity of 16-, 19-, and 24-month-old infants' (N = 296, 51.4% girls; 3.1% African American, 10.1% Asian, 12.9% Hispanic, 44.7% White, 29.2% other racial/ethnic groups) behavioral response patterns to five discrete emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust) during a naturalistic interaction. Various infant behaviors (social avoidance, security seeking, stimulus exploration, prosocial responding, information seeking, relaxed play) in response to the emotional context were coded. A latent-class analysis revealed four distinct classes of behaviors: prosocial exploring, active information seeking, cautious information seeking, and relaxed playing. Finally, a generalized linear mixed-effect model examined the differences in class prevalence across discrete emotions, across age groups, and between age groups within emotions. The analysis revealed several interesting differences in the frequency of each class across emotions and ages. This is the first study to utilize an infant-centered analysis to identify patterns of goal-directed behaviors in response to discrete emotions. Our findings suggest that infants are able to coordinate a variety of goal-directed behaviors to respond to emotional contexts. Furthermore, the utilization of each pattern of behaviors might be driven by the valence of the context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined the development of emotion understanding. Children (N = 296, 157 boys, 139 girls) and parents (67% White, 8% Black, 15% Hispanic, 2% Asian American, 6% Biracial, 2% "Other") recruited from Denver, Colorado were observed annually for four years starting in 2019 (beginning Mage = 2.44 years, SD = 0.26) discussing a wordless storybook featuring illustrated emoters expressing joy, sadness, fear, anger, or disgust towards a referent (e.g., dropped ice cream). Analyses revealed changes and bidirectional relations in children's and parents' emoter talk and referent talk across early childhood, as well as differences in parent and child relative emoter-referent emphasis for discrete emotions. Implications for the ontogeny and socialization of young children's emotion understanding will be discussed.

This study examined different sources of emotion socialization. Children (N = 256, 115 girls, 129 boys, 12 child gender not reported) and parents (62% White, 9% Black, 19% Hispanic, 3% Asian American, and 7% "Other") were recruited from Denver, Colorado. In waves 1 (Mage  = 2.45 years, SD = 0.26) and 2 (Mage  = 3.51 years, SD = 0.26), parents and children discussed wordless images of children experiencing an emotion (e.g., sad after dropping ice cream). Children's emotion knowledge was assessed at waves 2 and 3 (Mage  = 4.48 years, SD = 0.26). Structural equation modeling found concurrent and prospective relations between parents' questions, parents' emotion talk, children's emotion talk, and children's emotion knowledge, highlighting the multidimensional nature of early emotion socialization.

Problematic media use (PMU) tends to be related to significant social, emotional, and behavioral problems throughout life. Little research, however, has examined the development of PMU during early childhood, where media habits begin to form. The current longitudinal study examines the growth of PMU across early childhood (between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age) with a focus on predictors and outcomes (social, emotional, and parenting) of the intercept and slope of PMU over time. Participants (N = 269 children and their parents; 4.9% Asian American, 8.2% Black, 21% Hispanic or Latino, 63% White, 7% Mixed or Other race) completed questionnaires assessing PMU, media parenting, parental warmth and connection, and child social and emotional problems. Results indicated slight overall increases in PMU from ages 2.5 to 5.5. Emotional reactivity, aggression, and overall TV time predicted initial levels of PMU. Additionally, initial levels of PMU were related to social and emotional problems four years later. An increasing trajectory of PMU was associated with later aggression in childhood, even when controlling for initial levels of aggression. Implications for parents and prevention efforts aimed at reducing PMU are discussed.

Given the prevalence of mobile device use, especially among parents of young children, the current study examines the impact of mobile device distraction ( technoference ) on toddlers’ physiological and emotional functioning. We suspected that toddlers’ would demonstrate difficultly maintaining physiological and emotional homeostasis when parents became distracted by a mobile device. In this study, we examined toddlers’ (N = 129, M age = 29.05 months) physiological and behavioral responses across three conditions in an induced technoference task that mimicked elements of a traditional still face paradigm (i.e., social engagement, phone distraction, and social recovery). Similar to previous studies employing still face with younger infants, a majority of toddlers demonstrated a loss of positive affective tone mirrored by heart rate increase and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) decrease (vagal withdrawal) during the phone distraction condition relative to the initial and final social engagement conditions. However, some toddlers demonstrated vagal activation (RSA increase) to parents’ phone distraction. Greater RSA withdrawal was linked to decreased positive affect and increased negative affect for children during parents’ phone distraction. Parents who reported higher levels of technoference were more likely to have children who demonstrated lower vagal reactivity (greater vagal withdrawal) to parents’ phone distraction while parents attitudes about technoference (e.g., “it is okay to use a mobile device in front of my child”) was found to be linked to higher RSA reactivity (greater vagal activation). Findings are discussed in relation to Porges’ polyvagal theory and the possible role that interactive dynamics play in children's emerging regulatory systems.

Both princesses and superheroes are highly salient parts of early childhood in the United States. Because of the gendered nature of both princesses and superheroes, it is possible that they represent a salient facet of children's early gendered environments, and may be associated with other facets of gendered parenting. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to categorize patterns of young children's engagement with princess and superhero cultures using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) and (2) to examine whether children's profiles of engagement with princesses and superheroes are systematically associated with indicators of gendered parenting; approval of boy-typed and girl-typed play, parents' implicit attitudes about gender, and parents use of gendered language with their children. Using a sample of 404 parent-child dyads, we completed a Latent Profile Analysis of children's engagement with princesses and superheroes, identifying four profiles, Low Engagement, Princesses, Heroes, and High Engagement. Children's gender was related to their profile of engagement, but indicators of gendered parenting were not predictive of children's profile of princess/superhero engagement, apart from parent approval of girl-typed play. Finally, child gender did not moderate the relationship between indicators of gendered parenting and children's profile of princess/superhero engagement.

Limited literature has examined parents' unsolicited trait, mental state, and coping talk about media characters by race as they co-view with their children. We observed 195 US parents describing an illustrated depiction of racialized social exclusion for their child (53% male; Mage = 5.46 years; 60% White) in their home setting. Families discussed a Black child being excluded by White children or a White child being excluded by Black children. Parents' victim, emotion, personality, and coping talk about the excluded child were coded. Parents were more likely to use victim talk (e.g., "she's being excluded") and emotion talk (e.g., "she's sad") when the excluded child was Black and were more likely to use personality talk (e.g., "she's shy") when the excluded child was White. We further explored parents' demographic, personal, and neighborhood correlates with their trait, mental state, and coping talk. White parents with greater levels of egalitarian attitudes used more victim talk and coping talk (e.g., "she should go play with them") about the White excluded child. Being more politically conservative was associated with White parents using more coping talk about the Black excluded child. White parents living in predominantly Black neighborhoods were less likely to use victim talk toward the Black child. BIPOC parents showed more nuanced patterns. These findings suggest that parents' unsolicited racial messaging varies by racial identification, sociodemographic characteristics, and neighborhood context.

Many parents use screens to regulate their young children's emotions. We know very little, however, about how this parenting practice is related to the development of emotional competencies (i.e., emotional reactivity, emotion knowledge, and empathy) over time. The current longitudinal study examined bidirectional associations between media emotion regulation and various emotional competencies across a 1-year period during early childhood (between ages 3.5 and 4.5 on average). Participants included 269 child/parent dyads who completed a number of in-home tasks and questionnaires. Results revealed that higher levels of media emotion regulation were associated with worse emotional knowledge and empathy and higher emotional reactivity at the cross-sectional level. However, early media emotion regulation was associated with higher levels of child empathy 1 year later. We discuss these results in the context of general parenting practices and encourage future research on the topic with a focus on how these processes develop over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Infants engage in prosocial behaviors from very young ages and their prosocial behavior is clearly present by the second year of life. Physiological regulation has been related to infants' emerging prosocial behavior, with infants with better regulatory skills displaying increased prosocial behavior. Media use and media content has also been related to infants emerging prosocial behavior. The current study examined individual differences in infants' vagal regulation (as physiological marker of regulatory skills, N = 269) while engaging with emotionally salient media and how individual differences in vagal regulation were related to parental and child empathy, prosocial behavior, and media use. The study included parent-infant dyads co-viewing a brief educational but emotionally salient video clip, an observational prosocial sticker and sharing tasks, and parental reports of infants' prosocial media use, empathy, and parents' own prosocial media use, prosocial behavior, and empathy. Most infants displayed an increase in RSA while co-viewing the media clip relative to a neutral baseline. Infants with higher RSA (a sign of better regulation) during co-viewing displayed more prosocial behavior in the sticker and pen drop tasks, were rated as more empathic, and had primary caregivers who engaged with more prosocial media than infants who showed a decrease in RSA (e.g., more immature regulatory skills) during co-viewing. Results suggest the importance of vagal regulation in the presence of others' emotions for infants emerging prosocial behavior. Results also suggest that parents' own prosocial media viewing may indirectly influence on the way infants' respond physiologically to others' emotions.

Parents play an important role in socializing children's emotion understanding. Previous research shows that parents emphasize different aspects of emotion contexts depending on the discrete emotion. However, there is limited research on how parents and children discuss self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, and shame, and what socialization practices parents employ to elicit children's talk about these emotions. In this study, children (N = 166, 78 females, 88 males) ages 2-3 years (M = 2.46, SD = 0.26) and their parents (65.5% White, 10.2% Black, 17.5% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian American, and 5.4% other) from a large city in the Western United States discussed a wordless storybook depicting different female and male characters experiencing self-conscious emotions (embarrassment, guilt, shame, awe, and pride). Parents' and children's emotion talk and parents' questions were coded from their conversations about each emotion scenario and subsequently analyzed by discrete emotion, child gender, and the depicted character's gender. Parents and children differentially focused on different aspects of each self-conscious emotion as a function of discrete emotion and picture gender, and elements of children's talk about self-conscious emotions were related to children's expressive language and age. Additionally, parents' emotion talk and questions about emotions were directly related to children's emotion talk, even after controlling for children's age, expressive language, and parental education. Taken together, these findings suggest that parent-child emotion conversations may be one context that facilitates the development of children's understanding of self-conscious emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).