Do Preschoolers Respond Differently to Autonomy-Supportive and Controlling Prosody?

When motivating preschoolers, parents can use autonomy-supportive or more controlling communication. An important, yet understudied, aspect of such parental communication is parents’ tone of voice (i.e., prosody). Using a puppet interview protocol, the current research examined whether experimentally induced actor-recorded autonomy-supportive versus controlling prosody affects preschoolers’ reactions. In two samples (Sample 1, N = 189; Mage = 4.93; 40% male; Sample 2, N = 116; Mage = 4.77; 39.70% male), multilevel analyses indicated that Dutch-speaking preschoolers judged sentences conveyed with controlling, relative to autonomy-supportive, prosody as more pressuring and less supportive of choice. The controlling prosody was also associated with more anger and fear attributions. Across both samples, effects of controlling prosody on preschoolers’ attributed emotions did not vary systematically as a function of moderators such as child temperament, general parenting, social domain, and semantic content.