Facilitating Maltreated Children’s Use of Emotional Language

Abstract

This study examined the effects of rapport (emotional, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD]) and prompt type (what-next, cued-action, cued-emotion, what-think) on one hundred forty-two 4–9-year-old maltreated children’s spontaneous and prompted emotional language. Children in the emotional-rapport condition narrated the last time they felt good and the last time they felt bad on the playground. Children in the NICHD-rapport condition narrated their last birthday party and what happened yesterday. Following rapport, all children were presented a series of story stems about positive and negative situations. Emotional-rapport minimally affected children’s use of emotional language. Cued-emotion prompts were most productive in eliciting emotional language. Overall, there were few effects because of age. Children often produced less emotional language when describing negative events, particularly with respect to their spontaneous utterances, suggesting reluctance. These differences largely disappeared when children were asked additional questions, particularly cued-emotion questions. The results offer support for cued-emotion prompts as a means of increasing maltreated children’s use of emotional language.