Evaluating Parent-Child Emotion Talk During Digital Application Use

Abstract

The increasing use of new digital media, such as digital applications (apps), presents new opportunities for parent-child co-play. Active parent engagement during co-play can promote parent-child emotion talk, which benefits the emotional development of children. One method to prompt parent-child co-play with digital media is through parent-directed nudges, which are written suggestions that encourage specific behaviors in children and parents. There is limited research about the effectiveness of parent-directed nudges in digital applications on prompting emotion talk. To address this gap, the current study examined how parent-directed nudges in a digital co-play application affected total parent-child emotion talk in families with 4- and 5-year-old children. Parents and children were assigned a version of the app to interact with at home during a 2-week period. The experimental group received a version with parent-directed nudges that included short prompts to promote parent engagement. I hypothesized that experimental group families would experience a greater increase in total emotion words after the 2 weeks than the control group, whose version did not include nudges. However, I found no significant difference in the change in the total number of parent and child emotion words used between the experimental and control conditions. There was a significant, positive correlation between parent and child emotion words regardless of condition. This paper also discusses future directions for this type of research.