Fatherhood and emotion regulation in preschoolers: The role of cognitive sensitivity and competence

The 54th annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Belgrade, Sırbistan, 29 - 31 Mayıs 2025, ss.1-2, (Özet Bildiri)

Emotion regulation is the ability to recognize and manage emotional experiences, and preschool children

begin to develop this skill during early childhood. Parents play a crucial role in this process; however,

previous studies have primarily focused on mothers, while the influence of fathers is equally important

(Lamb, 2010; Palkovitz, 2002). There is a need for more research on how fathers transmit their own

parenting experiences to their children. There are studies in the literature examining the influences of

fathers’ cognitive sensitivity and competence beliefs on children’s emotional development, but no research

has comprehensively examined the relationship between these three factors (Fletcher et al., 2011;

Gonzalez et al., 2017).

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of intergenerational fathering, fathers’ cognitive

sensitivity, and fathers’ paternal competence beliefs on emotion regulation skills in preschool children aged

5-6. The target sample size is 80 father-child pairs. To measure fathers’ cognitive sensitivity, the puzzle task

developed by Prime, Perlman, and others (2014) is used; followed by the emotion regulation tasks for

children developed by Carlson (2007). The emotion regulation of the child is assessed through three tasks,

“disappointing gift”, “secret keeping”, and “emotion understanding”, taking a total of approximately 20

minutes. While the emotion regulation task is being applied to the child, fathers complete the “Fatherhood

Scale” (Dick.2000)to measure intergenerational fathering and the “Paternal Competence Scale” (Johnston &

Marsh,1989) to measure fathers’ paternal competence beliefs.

It is hypothesized that intergenerational fatherhood, fathers’ cognitive sensitivity, and fathers’ paternal

competence beliefs interact to influence children’s emotion regulation skills. Specifically, it is hypothesized

that positive father-child interactions and higher fathers’ paternal competence beliefs lead fathers to be

more responsive to their children’s emotional needs, thereby strengthening their emotion regulation skills.

Data collection is ongoing and is expected to be completed by April. The findings of the study shed light on

the role of fathers in providing emotional support, as well as how father-child interactions and fathers’

paternal competence beliefs influence children’s socio-cognitive development.