Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle
When interacting with one another, bilingual caregivers and their young bilingual children can switch from one language to another to convey emotion and information in meaningful ways. The Specificity Principle (Bornstein, 2017) states that specific setting conditions affect specific outcomes in spe...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146723 |
| _version_ | 1811694666350854144 |
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| author | Esposito, Gianluca Raghunath, Bindiya Lakshmi Azhari, Atiqah Setoh, Peipei Bornstein, Marc H. |
| author2 | School of Social Sciences |
| author_facet | School of Social Sciences Esposito, Gianluca Raghunath, Bindiya Lakshmi Azhari, Atiqah Setoh, Peipei Bornstein, Marc H. |
| author_sort | Esposito, Gianluca |
| collection | NTU |
| description | When interacting with one another, bilingual caregivers and their young bilingual children can switch from one language to another to convey emotion and information in meaningful ways. The Specificity Principle (Bornstein, 2017) states that specific setting conditions affect specific outcomes in specific ways in specific individuals at specific times. Here we tested three constituents of the Specificity Principle: We evaluated how the language used in interaction (setting condition) differentially affects different dimensions of emotional availability (outcomes) in mothers and children (individuals). Twenty-six Singaporean English-Mandarin bilingual mother-child dyads (Mother M age = 33 years; Child M age = 19 months) participated in two counterbalanced play sessions, one exclusively in English and one exclusively in Mandarin. Using recursive-partitioning analyses, we assessed (i) how child language dominance, dimensions of maternal emotional availability, and mother-child physiological synchrony accounted for dimensions of child emotional availability and (ii) how child language dominance, child emotional availability, and mother-child physiological synchrony accounted for overall maternal emotional availability. In agreement with predictions from the Specificity Principle, our results show that different predictors of different dimensions of child and mother emotional availability differ according to whether the mother interacted with her child in the child's dominant or non-dominant language. The findings suggest that language specificity influences the quality of mother-child interactions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T07:11:12Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/146723 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T07:11:12Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1467232023-03-05T15:34:06Z Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle Esposito, Gianluca Raghunath, Bindiya Lakshmi Azhari, Atiqah Setoh, Peipei Bornstein, Marc H. School of Social Sciences Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Rovereto, TN, Italy Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA UNICEF, New York City, NY, USA Institutes for Fiscal Studies, London, United Kingdom Social sciences::Psychology Mother-child Emotional Availability HRV Synchrony When interacting with one another, bilingual caregivers and their young bilingual children can switch from one language to another to convey emotion and information in meaningful ways. The Specificity Principle (Bornstein, 2017) states that specific setting conditions affect specific outcomes in specific ways in specific individuals at specific times. Here we tested three constituents of the Specificity Principle: We evaluated how the language used in interaction (setting condition) differentially affects different dimensions of emotional availability (outcomes) in mothers and children (individuals). Twenty-six Singaporean English-Mandarin bilingual mother-child dyads (Mother M age = 33 years; Child M age = 19 months) participated in two counterbalanced play sessions, one exclusively in English and one exclusively in Mandarin. Using recursive-partitioning analyses, we assessed (i) how child language dominance, dimensions of maternal emotional availability, and mother-child physiological synchrony accounted for dimensions of child emotional availability and (ii) how child language dominance, child emotional availability, and mother-child physiological synchrony accounted for overall maternal emotional availability. In agreement with predictions from the Specificity Principle, our results show that different predictors of different dimensions of child and mother emotional availability differ according to whether the mother interacted with her child in the child's dominant or non-dominant language. The findings suggest that language specificity influences the quality of mother-child interactions. Ministry of Education (MOE) Accepted version This research was supported by the Nanyang Technological University NAP SUG Grant (GE), Singapore Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund Tier 1 (GE;PS), Social Science Research Thematic Grant (MOE2016- SSRTG-017, PS), Intramural Research Program of the NIH/NICHD, USA, (MHB) and an International Research Fellowship at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London, UK, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 695300-HKADeC-ERC-2015-AdG, MHB). 2021-03-08T08:57:20Z 2021-03-08T08:57:20Z 2021 Journal Article Esposito, G., Raghunath, B. L., Azhari, A., Setoh, P., & Bornstein, M. H. (2021). Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 73, 101241-. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101241 0193-3973 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146723 10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101241 2-s2.0-85099626436 73 101241 en Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. This paper was published in Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology and is made available with permission of Elsevier Inc. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Psychology Mother-child Emotional Availability HRV Synchrony Esposito, Gianluca Raghunath, Bindiya Lakshmi Azhari, Atiqah Setoh, Peipei Bornstein, Marc H. Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title | Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title_full | Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title_fullStr | Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title_full_unstemmed | Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title_short | Predicting mother and child emotional availability in Singaporean bilingual English and Mandarin dyads : a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| title_sort | predicting mother and child emotional availability in singaporean bilingual english and mandarin dyads a multilevel approach to the specificity principle |
| topic | Social sciences::Psychology Mother-child Emotional Availability HRV Synchrony |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/146723 |
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