Research basis - Said & Heard

The starting point

Said & Heard is a research-credible but not directly validated family exercise. The individual psychological mechanisms it draws on are well studied. The exact combination, a four-question spoken family reflection plus the Important Things routine, has not been studied as such.

We say this openly, because honest claims matter more to us than impressive ones. This page summarises what the evidence supports, where it is only indirect, and what we therefore do not promise.

Mechanisms with solid evidence

Naming feelings. Putting feelings into words (affect labeling) works as implicit emotion regulation. In adult brain-imaging studies, labeling an emotion is associated with reduced amygdala activity through a prefrontal regulation pathway (Torre & Lieberman 2018; Lieberman et al. 2007). This is mechanism evidence from adults, not direct evidence about this app.

Saying things out loud. Producing words aloud improves memory compared with silent reading (the production effect, MacLeod et al. 2010), and linking things to yourself improves encoding (the self-reference effect, Symons & Johnson 1997, a meta-analysis of 129 studies). The strongest added value of the shared moment, however, comes from interaction: others hear you, and they can respond.

Emotional skills can be practised. A meta-analysis of 424 studies with 575,361 students (Cipriano et al. 2023) found that social and emotional learning programmes improved skills, attitudes, behaviour and school performance. These are school programmes, not a home app, so for Said & Heard this is evidence that the skill itself is trainable.

The parent as the channel. A meta-analysis of 15 randomised trials (England-Mason et al. 2023) found that supporting parents emotion-socialisation practices improved those practices (g = 0.50), childrens emotional competence (g = 0.44) and childrens behaviour (g = 0.34). This directly supports a model in which the tool is used by the parent, not the child.

Predictable routines. A systematic review of 170 studies (Selman & Dilworth-Bart 2024) links everyday family routines with positive child development, with a protective role especially under strain. The evidence is associative, not causal.

Sharing what went well. Sharing a positive event, and receiving an active, constructive response to it, increases positive affect and relationship satisfaction (capitalization, Gable et al. 2004). This is why the app also guides the parent in how to respond, not just what to ask.

An honest note on positive psychology

The What Went Well exercise (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson 2005) is a documented starting point for Said & Heard. Its evidence is weaker than it is often presented to be: a careful replication (Mongrain & Anselmo-Matthews 2012) found that a positive placebo exercise produced similar gains, and a bias-corrected meta-analysis (White, Uttl & Holder 2019) estimated the average effect of positive psychology interventions on wellbeing at around r = .10. Gratitude interventions have small effects on depression and anxiety symptoms, especially against active controls (Cregg & Cheavens 2021).

This is exactly why Said & Heard does not claim to prevent depression or anxiety. The stronger grounds for the exercise are the mechanisms above, not positive psychology as a brand.

About the Important Things routine

The routine, where a child says out loud that they are wonderful, important and safe, and the parent answers that they are and that they are loved, is not the standard form of self-affirmation studied in research, which is reflection on ones own values. One well-known study (Wood, Perunovic & Lee 2009) even found that repeating positive self-statements can backfire in adults with low self-esteem.

We therefore treat the routine as what the evidence best supports: a predictable ritual of acceptance, warmth and expressed love between parent and child. It is always an invitation, never a demand, and it is not marketed as a technique that changes self-image.

What the app does not claim

Said & Heard is not therapy, a crisis service or trauma treatment, and it does not replace professional help. Without its own effectiveness study it does not claim to improve childrens mental health, prevent depression or anxiety, raise self-esteem, strengthen secure attachment, repair family dynamics or help recover from intimate partner violence.

What we can say is descriptive: the app guides a shared daily moment, helps name feelings, helps notice successes and positive events, supports sharing them, and supports the parent in modelling emotional skills.

Next step: our own study

Direct evidence for this exact exercise does not exist yet, so the logical next step is our own research: cognitive pretesting with families, a feasibility pilot, and then a preregistered randomised pilot study. The primary outcomes will be the amount of family emotion talk, the parents experienced connection with the child and the acceptability of the exercise, not clinical symptoms.

Key sources

The summary above simplifies. Each claim on this page maps to the sources below; effect sizes are reported as in the original publications.