xv, 97 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Emotion experiences such as internalized distress have been described mostly in European Americans and adults in the psychological literature and less in Asian American children. Associations between emotion experience and expressivity have been established mostly through samples of European American children. Finally, the functionality of emotion experience and expressivity across cultural norms has not been examined thoroughly, especially in ethnic minority or bicultural children. This is of concern given that cultural ideals for emotion differ across cultural groups. This dissertation incorporates a cultural perspective to understanding the emotion experience while also relying on the functionalist approach as an organizing framework to understand expressivity in children from an Asian background. This study examined 70 Chinese American and 71 European American mothers and their 5 to 7 year old children. Mother and child reports of children's internalized V experience were obtained. Observers also rated children's expressivity in a frustration- eliciting task, alone and in the presence of their mothers. The first objective of the dissertation was to characterize the emotion experiences of Chinese American and European American young children, in particular, internalized distress. The second objective of this dissertation sought to observe children's expressivity in response to a frustrating situation, with and without their mothers. As a whole, Chinese American children experienced greater internalized distress than European American children based on mother and child reports. Contrary to hypotheses, Chinese American children were just as expressive as European American children during the frustration eliciting task, especially when mothers were present in the room. Furthermore, it appeared that European American children with greater child-reported anxiety and mother-reported depression showed less increase in their expressivity than all the other children when their mothers entered into the room. This study explored the role of culture in the socialization of emotion and the functionality of expressivity in solitary and social situations. Overall, this dissertation suggests that cultural, situational, and internal emotion experience are factors which concurrently play a role in children's emotion expressivity. / Adviser: Jeffrey Measelle

abstract: The first half-year of infancy represents a salient time in which emotion expression assumes a more psychological character as opposed to a predominantly physiological one. Although previous research has demonstrated the relations between early parenting and later emotional competencies, there has been less of a focus on differentiating positive and negative emotion expression across the early infancy period. Thus, the current study investigates the growth of positive and negative emotion expression across early infancy in a low-income, Mexican-American sample, and examines the development of emotion expression as a function of early maternal emotion socialization and prenatal stress. Participants included 322 mothers and their infants. Data were collected in participants' homes prenatally and when the infants were 12-, 18-, and 24-weeks old. Mothers were asked to interact with their infants in a semi-structured teaching task, and video-taped interactions of mother and infant behaviors were then coded. Data for mothers was collected at the prenatal and 12-week visits and data for infants was collected at the 12-, 18-, and 24-week visits. Prenatal stress was measured via two questionnaires (Daily Hassles Questionnaire and Perceived Stress Scale). Maternal socialization at 12 weeks was represented as a composite of four observational codes from the Coding Interactive Behavior coding system. Infant emotion expression was also globally rated across the 5-minute teaching task. Findings suggest that the normative development of emotion expression across early infancy is complex. Positive emotion expression may increase across the early infancy period whereas negative emotion expression decreases. Further, at 12 weeks, greater maternal emotion socialization relates to more infant positivity and less negativity, in line with current conceptualization of parenting. However, across time, greater early socialization predicted decreased positivity and was unrelated to negative emotion expression. Findings also suggest that prenatal stress does not relate to socialization efforts or to infant emotion expression. A better understanding of the nuanced development of positive and negative emotion development as a function of early parenting may have implications for early intervention and prevention in this high-risk population. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015

Excerpt:I live in a place that evokes fear, a place deformed by layers and layers of pulse-racing images, of intoxicating whiskey-dark stories.