Exploring Technology-Mediated Parental Socialisation of Emotion: Leveraging an Embodied, In-situ Intervention for Child Emotion Regulation

Title of the Paper

Exploring Technology-Mediated Parental Socialisation of Emotion: Leveraging an Embodied, In-situ Intervention for Child Emotion Regulation

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), child emotion regulation, parenting interventions
• Keywords: parent-child interaction, emotion socialisation, emotion regulation, user-centred design, tangible interaction

Research Background and Issues

• Existing Problems or Challenges:

  • Emotion regulation is a crucial life skill, but current technologies have not been fully utilized to support parental emotion socialisation practices at home.
  • Psychological interventions are often time-consuming, resource-intensive, and difficult to scale to home environments.
  • The HCI field has yet to explore in detail how technology can improve emotion socialisation.

• Significance of the Research:

  • Parental emotion socialisation practices are closely linked to children's long-term well-being, social competence, and academic performance.
  • Supportive emotion socialisation can foster emotion regulation in children, whereas critical or neglectful responses may lead to emotional issues.

• Motivation and Related Work:

  • Existing research on parental emotion socialisation primarily focuses on psychology, with limited interventions that are not scalable.
  • HCI research has mainly addressed children's own emotion regulation, lacking designs that involve parent-child interaction.
  • This study aims to explore how a technology intervention based on smart toys can influence emotional interactions within families.

Solution

• Proposed Method:

  • Utilizing the design and application of a smart toy called "Purrble" to study the long-term impact of this technological intervention on child and family emotion socialisation.
  • Through child-led intervention, the goal is to promote immediate emotion regulation while positively influencing family emotional interactions.

• Innovative Points:

  • The smart toy simulates a "heartbeat" through vibration feedback, combined with touch and accelerometer-based interaction technologies, helping children shift attention to the toy during intense emotional moments, thereby achieving an "embodied" regulation experience.
  • Explores the connection between the toy's interactivity and family emotional interactions, designing related parental guidance and instructional tools.

• Implementation Steps and Techniques:

  1. Phase One: Interviewed 29 parents to study long-term usage patterns of the smart toy and its impact on the emotion socialisation process within families.
  2. Phase Two: Conducted co-design workshops with 12 parents and 8 parenting course instructors to explore additional designs and support layers that could optimize the toy's impact on family interactions.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • The smart toy naturally facilitated emotion-related parent-child interactions in some families, such as discussions and expressions of emotions.
  • For families where these interactions did not occur spontaneously, additional support mechanisms were designed, including parental guidance resources and content on how to direct children's interactions.

• Advantages:

  • Compared to traditional parenting interventions, the smart toy provides families with more opportunities for spontaneous interaction through its interactivity and embodied experience.
  • Some families reported reduced conflicts and more natural, routine emotional discussions.

• Experimental Results and Evaluation:

  • Approximately 34% of families reported significant impacts of the smart toy on parent-child emotional interactions.
  • Other families used the toy primarily for immediate emotion regulation in children, without broader impacts, highlighting the need for additional support layers to systematically foster family interactions.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Only a subset of families benefited naturally, requiring further research to design universally applicable mechanisms.
  • Data collection focused on parental perspectives, lacking direct feedback from children on their interactions with the smart toy.
  • Long-term usage may be influenced by novelty effects; extended study periods are needed to observe changes in behavioral patterns.
  • Interaction design should be optimized based on children's developmental stages to enhance intervention effectiveness.

Conclusion

This paper provides a significant design and theoretical foundation for research on technology-mediated emotion socialisation interventions, demonstrating how a child-led emotion regulation smart toy can support family emotional interactions. The study also highlights the importance of supportive emotion socialisation practices and open design questions, offering systematic directions for future work.