The Unexpected Impact of Parental Emotional Socialization on Theory of Mind and Emotion Regulation: The Case of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Improving our understanding of contribution of environmental factors to Theory of Mind (ToM) and Emotion Regulation (ER) competences in children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) is crucial to helping them to boost their emotional and social abilities.Parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) have been shown to be favorable factors for the development of these competences in preschoolers.However, few studies have investigated links between mothers' and fathers' ERSBs and socio-emotional abilities in children with IDs.The goal of this study is to explore the share of the variance in ToM and ER abilities explained by individual characteristic and each parent's reactions to the emotions of their children with IDs and emotion-related conversation.Twenty-seven mothers, 16 fathers, and their children with IDs participated.Direct and indirect measures of children's ToM were used.Questionnaires about children's ER competences and parents' ERSBs were completed by parents.The results demonstrated that, at preschool developmental age, parents' ERSBs had an impact on affective and cognitive ToM as well as on ER, depending on the parent's gender, on children's chronological and developmental age, and on the nature of ERSBs, namely reactions or conversations.