Multi-lingual kids able to express emotions better

Washington -  Scientists have delved deeper into the linguistic phenomenon of code switching or switching back and forth between different languages, to better understand how using  different languages to discuss and express emotions in a multilingual family might play an important role in children’s emotional development.

Psychological scientists Stephen Chen and Qing Zhou of the University of California, Berkeley and Morgan Kennedy of Bard College, propose that the particular language parents choose to  use when discussing and expressing emotion can have significant impacts on children’s emotional understanding, experience, and regulation.

“Over the past few years, there’s been a steadily growing interest in the languages multilingual individuals use to express emotions,” Chen said.

“We were interested in the potential clinical and developmental implications of emotion-related language shifts, particularly within the context of the family,” he said.

Existing research from psychological science underscores the fact that language plays a key role in emotion because it allows the speakers to articulate, conceal, or discuss feelings.

When parents verbally express their emotions, they contribute to their children’s emotional development by providing them a model of how emotions can be articulated and regulated.

When parents discuss emotion, they help their children to accurately label and consequently understand their own emotions. This explicit instruction can further help children to better

regulate their emotions.

Additionally, research from linguistics suggests that when bilingual individuals switch languages, the way they experience emotions changes as well.

Bilingual parents may use a specific language to express an emotional concept because they feel that language provides a better cultural context for expressing the emotion.

Thus, the language that a parent chooses to express a particular concept can help to provide cues that reveal his or her emotional state.

Language choice may also influence how children experience emotion, such expressions can potentially elicit a greater emotional response when spoken in the child’s native language.

Shifting from one language to another may help children to regulate their emotional response by using a less emotional, non-native language as a way to decrease negative arousal, or to

help model culture specific emotional regulation.

Overall, the authors argue that research from psychological science and linguistics suggests that a child’s emotional competence is fundamentally shaped by a multilingual environment.

These findings may be particularly useful in the development of intervention programs for immigrant families, helping intervention staff to be aware of how the use of different languages in

various contexts can have an emotional impact.

“Our aim in writing this review was to highlight what we see as a rich new area of cross-disciplinary research,” Chen said.

“We’re especially excited to see how the implications of emotion-related language switching can be explored beyond the parent-child dyad – for example, in marital interactions, or in the

context of therapy and other interventions,” Chen added.

The study was recently published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.