Child Emotion-Specific Language and Emotion Regulation: A Meta-Analytic Review

Language provides cognitive scaffolding that is necessary for emotion regulation. From a domain-specific perspective, growing research has revealed that children’s emotion-specific language, including their abilities to recognize, label, express, and understand emotions are associated with their emotion regulation capacities. However, the magnitude and specificity of these associations remain unclear. The present meta-analysis synthesized findings from 65 empirical studies (370 effect sizes; N = 28,925) involving children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years to examine the relation between emotion-specific language and emotion regulation. Using three-level random-effects models with robust variance estimation and Pearson’s correlation coefficients (r) as the primary effect size metric, we quantified the overall association between emotion-specific language and emotion regulation. Moderations by emotion-specific language type, measurement methodology, developmental stage, and continent were systematically examined. Across studies, emotion-specific language was positively associated with emotion regulation (r = .13, 95% CI = [.09, .16]). Moderator analyses indicated that, although emotion-specific language type did not emerge as a significant overall moderator, higher-order skills (emotion understanding) were more strongly associated with emotion regulation than basic emotion recognition abilities. Significant moderation was observed for the measurement methodology of emotion regulation, including both measurement approach and informant, with effect sizes being significantly larger for researcher-assessed measures than for child self-reports. Other factors, including age group, continent, and emotion-specific language informant, did not significantly moderate the association. Our findings underscore the importance of fostering emotion-specific language development to support emotion regulation development and inform educational and clinical interventions, while also emphasizing the need for multi-method, context-sensitive, and longitudinal research to elucidate developmental mechanisms.