The Primary School Child's Language of Emotions

Plutchik's theory of emotion states that primary emotions, namely joy, acceptance, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, expectation and disgust, are experienced by all individuals from birth. Literature claims that primary school children (aged 9‐12 years) are capable of verbalising emotions. This research outlines the steps taken to identify a language of emotions which is understood and used by primary school children to express emotional experience. A sample of 444 English‐speaking, white boys and girls aged 9‐12 years was used. As a result, verbal statements were identified as being part of the child's language pertaining to the emotions of joy, anger, fear, sadness and interest. The children showed less agreement about statements expressing disgust, acceptance and surprise.     

Attachment Security Priming Decreases Children's Physiological Response to Threat

Ninety 6- and 7-year-olds (49.3% White, mostly middle class) from greater Washington, DC were randomly assigned to a subliminal priming condition (secure, happy, or neutral) to determine if attachment security priming decreases physiological, expressive, and self-reported fear reactions to threatening stimuli. Dispositional attachment security was also assessed. Secure priming and attachment security each decreased electrodermal reactivity, increased vagal augmentation, and decreased fearful facial expressions compared to control conditions. Examination of a statistical interaction between security priming and child attachment indicated that, although secure children had increased vagal augmentation and fewer fearful expressions than insecure children, the effects of priming were constant across secure and insecure children. There were no priming or attachment effects associated with children's self-reported fear.     

Temperamental Emotionality Attributes as Antecedents of Children's Social Information Processing

This study examined temperament dimensions of emotion as precursors of children's social information processing (SIP) of stressful peer events. Two hundred and forty-three preschool children (M = 4.60 years) and their primary caregivers participated in two measurement occasions spaced 2 years apart. Observations of temperamental anger, fearful distress, positive affect, and effortful control were assessed in multiple laboratory tasks across two visits at Wave 1. SIP assessments from vignettes of peer challenges were repeated across two waves and included: eye tracking measures of attention to peer emotion displays, hostile attribution bias, hostile solutions, and subjective distress. Findings from structural equation models with inclusion of autoregressive controls indicated that effortful control, fear, and anger predicted subsequent changes in specific SIP dimensions.     

Child emotionality and maternal responsiveness as predictors of reunion behaviors in the strange situation: links mediated and unmediated by separation distress

Children's emotionality--fear, anger, and joy--observed outside of the relationship with the mother (in standard laboratory paradigms), and within that relationship (in mother-child interactions), and mothers' responsiveness, all at 9 and 14 months, were examined as predictors of the reunion behaviors in the Strange Situation at 14 months in 112 children. Many predictors were linked to the reunion behaviors, but most of those relations were at least partially mediated by children's separation distress, which itself strongly predicted the reunion behaviors. Those relations were no longer significant when distress was controlled. Several links, however, remained significant, and they were unmediated by distress: Almost all involved measures assessed within the context of the mother-child relationship. In particular, possible markers of a suboptimal relationship (children's dampened joy and increased anger in interactions with the mother, poor maternal responsiveness) were associated with more avoidance and resistance upon reunion, even after accounting for the strong impact of distress. Studying how factors measured outside of and within early relationships influence the components of the attachment system may foster understanding of child behavior in the Strange Situation.     

Comparison of sadness, anger, and fear facial expressions when toddlers look at their mothers

Research suggests that sadness expressions may be more beneficial to children than other emotions when eliciting support from caregivers. It is unclear, however, when children develop the ability to regulate their displays of distress. The current study addressed this question. Distress facial expressions (e.g., fear, anger, and sadness) were examined in 24-month-old toddlers throughout 4 episodes as well as specifically during looks to their mothers. Consistent with hypotheses and the literature, toddlers expressed sadness more frequently and with more intensity than target emotions only during looks to their mothers. These findings indicate that toddlers as young as 24 months of age are using particular emotional displays to elicit support from the social environment.     

Children's responses to angry adult behavior as a function of marital distress and history of interparent hostility

Responses of 2-5-year-old children to angry adult behavior were examined as a function of parental report of marital distress, history of interparent verbal hostility, and history of interparent physical hostility. A trained actor engaged the child's mother in an emotionally expressive verbal exchange while the child played in the same room. The exchange was standardized and consisted of a 7-episode sequence of shifting background conditions (no emotion, friendly, no emotion, angry, no emotion, reconciliation, no emotion). Preoccupation with anger, expressed concern and support-seeking, and accepting of social responsibility (e.g., providing physical or verbal comfort to the mother) were greater in response to background anger than in response to prosocial conditions. The parents' marital adjustment was positively associated with expressed concern and support-seeking by children in response to anger. Form and degree of marital conflict interacted with age and sex in predicting children's response to anger as well. In particular, children whose parents engaged in physical aggressiveness showed increased preoccupation, concern and support-seeking, and social responsibility responses with increasing age. Implications of these findings for the study of the effects of marital discord on children are discussed.     

Attention to Faces Expressing Negative Emotion at 7 Months Predicts Attachment Security at 14 Months

To investigate potential infant‐related antecedents characterizing later attachment security, this study tested whether attention to facial expressions, assessed with an eye‐tracking paradigm at 7 months of age (N = 73), predicted infant–mother attachment in the Strange Situation Procedure at 14 months. Attention to fearful faces at 7 months predicted attachment security, with a smaller attentional bias to fearful expressions associated with insecure attachment. Attachment disorganization in particular was linked to an absence of the age‐typical attentional bias to fear. These data provide the first evidence linking infants' attentional bias to negative facial expressions with attachment formation and suggest reduced sensitivity to facial expressions of negative emotion as a testable trait that could link attachment disorganization with later behavioral outcomes.     

Infant reactivity and reliance on mother during emotion challenges: prediction of cognition and language skills in a low-income sample

This investigation considers the association between patterns of emotional reactivity and reliance on mother in infancy and cognitive and language developments at age 2. Low-income women (N = 518) and their firstborn infants participated in (1) a lab-based assessment where emotion challenges were presented when the infants were 6 to 9 months old, and (2) an assessment of language and cognitive skills at age 2. After controlling for birthweight, early sensorimotor delay, and age at testing, infants who displayed a pattern of combined high reactivity and high reliance on mother in response to positive, anger, and fear emotion challenges had higher cognitive and language skills at age 2 compared with infants who displayed patterns of low reactivity and low reliance on mother. Children who showed high fearful distress and low reliance on mother and whose mothers had low psychological resources had especially poor developmental outcomes. The role of maternal availability in the socialization of emotion and early communication is discussed.     

Parents’ Perceptions of and Responses to Children’s Emotions: Relations With Meta-Emotion Philosophy and Adult Attachment

Objective. This study investigated how parents’ perceptions of, feelings toward, and anticipated responses to children’s emotions relate to parents’ meta-emotion philosophy and attachment. Design. Parents (112 mothers and 95 fathers) completed an online research study where they viewed photographs of unfamiliar girls and boys (aged 10–14 years) displaying varying intensities of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and neutral expressions. Parents labeled the emotion, identified the emotion’s intensity, and reported their mirrored emotion and responses. They also completed measures assessing their meta-emotion philosophy and attachment. Results. Meta-emotion philosophy predicted parents’ responses to children’s negative emotion, in that greater emotion-coaching predicted greater accuracy in labeling emotions (boys only), a greater likelihood to interact with children, and for mothers to be further from the mean in either direction in their mirrored emotion. Attachment also predicted parents’ responses to children’s negative emotions: Parents higher in anxiety reported more mirrored emotion, and those higher in avoidance reported less mirrored emotion, lower intensity, and less willingness to interact (boys only). In exploratory models for positive emotion, parents’ meta-emotion philosophy did not predict their responses, but parents higher in attachment avoidance rated girls’ positive emotions as less intense, reported less mirrored emotion, less willingness to interact, and less supportive responses, and those higher in anxiety showed the opposite pattern. Conclusion. Despite methodological limitations, results offer new evidence that parents’ ratings on a standardized emotion perception task as well as their anticipated responses toward children’s emotion displays are predicted by individual differences in their attachment and meta-emotion philosophy.     

Mixed Message Resolution and Children's Responses to Interadult Conflict

In everyday life marital conflict resolutions may contain consistent or mixed messages (e.g., an angry apology). How do children weight content and emotion information in responding? 5–7- and 9–12-year-olds viewed videotaped interadult conflicts in which the content and emotion of endings were either consistent or discrepant. Both the younger and older children responded to content and emotion cues in their perceptions of adults' anger and conflict resolution, with positive emotion and nonconflictual endings each improving appraisals. These findings have implications for children's emotional security in reaction to marital conflict. Younger children focused on ( a ) the content of endings when estimating their own emotional distress and ( b ) adults' emotionality when suggesting interventions. Older children reacted emotionally to both content and emotion cues. They proposed task-oriented help for partially resolved conflicts and suggested mediation when conflicts were unresolved.     

Placement in Foster Care Enhances Quality of Attachment Among Young Institutionalized Children

This study examined classifications of attachment in 42-month-old Romanian children ( N  = 169). Institutionalized since birth, children were assessed comprehensively, randomly assigned to care as usual (CAU) or to foster care, and compared to family-reared children. Attachment classifications for children in foster care were markedly different from those in the CAU. Importantly, children placed in foster care before 24 months were more likely to have secure attachments and if placed earlier were less likely to have disorganized or insecure-other attachments. Cognitive status predicted greater likelihood of organized attachment in the CAU and greater likelihood of secure attachment in the foster care and never-institutionalized groups. Foster care is an important intervention to reduce the adverse effects following early deprivation.     

Attachment and Emotion Regulation during Mother-Teen Problem Solving: A Control Theory Analysis

We present a control theory analysis of adolescents' attachment strategies in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In Study 1, Q-sort prototypes for secure/anxious and deactivating/hyperactivating strategies were used to differentiate between Main and Goldwyn's AAI classifications. In Study 2, we examined how AAI strategies were associated with emotion regulation during mother-teen problem solving. 4 aspects of mother-teen problem solving (dysfunctional anger, support/validation, avoidance of problem solving, and maternal dominance) were used to predict teens' AAI strategies. Teens with secure strategies engaged in problem-solving discussions characterized by less dysfunctional anger and less avoidance of problem solving. In addition, attachment security showed a curvilinear relation with maternal dominance, indicating that secure teens maintained balanced assertiveness with their mothers. Teens with deactivating strategies engaged in problem-solving interactions characterized by higher levels of maternal dominance and dysfunctional anger. The contribution of attachment strategies to teens' autonomy and to transformations in mother-teen relationships is discussed.     

Toddlers’ understanding of basic emotions: identification,labeling and causality / La comprensión temprana de las emociones básicas: identificación,etiquetado y causalidad

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the early acquisition pattern of the understanding of basic emotions. Many studies indicate that three-year-old children identify emotions such as joy or sadness, but it is not known how this knowledge arises. Fifty-seven boys and girls between 21 and 32 months were assessed using the Brunet-Lezine-R developmental scale (BL-R) (Josse, 1997) and the Affective knowledge Test (AKT) (Denham, 1986). Through this test we evaluated the children’s knowledge of four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) in three of its components (identification, causality and linguistic labeling). In order to track knowledge acquisition longitudinally, a small subgroup of 19 children was evaluated again six months later. The result of the evaluation by emotions and components allows some conclusions: first, the emotion that older children better understand is anger, followed by happiness and sadness. Second, the first component that children manage is the identification of facial expressions. They then progressively incorporate knowledge about typical causality, and finally, the linguistic labels together with some understanding of atypical causality. The results are discussed from a developmental point of view. This typical developmental pattern also allows some educational and clinical implications.     

Children's responses to different forms of expression of anger between adults

Anger is not a homogeneous stimulus, but can vary on a variety of dimensions and domains. This study examined children's responses to anger as a function of: (a) the mode of expression of anger (nonverbal, verbal, verbal-physical), and (b) whether or not anger between others was resolved. Children were presented with videotaped segments of angry and friendly interactions and asked questions concerning their responses. All angry interactions, including non-verbal anger, were perceived as negative events and elicited negative emotions. Unresolved anger was perceived as a far more negative event than resolved anger and induced greater feelings of anger and distress in children. Verbal-physical anger was perceived as the most negative form of expression of anger. Boys reported more angry feelings in response to anger than girls. Distress responding was greater in children from homes in which there was interparent physical aggression and in children with behavior problems. Finally, the utility of this methodology is supported by relatively high test-retest reliability and limited evidence of context effects.     

Changes in Child-Teacher Relationships in a Therapeutic Preschool Program

The purpose of this paper was to examine the processes and outcomes of teacher-child attachment relationship formation in a therapeutic preschool. Although the average child did not form a secure teacher-child attachment relationship, as a group and over time children became more secure in their teacher-child attachment relationships. Children who were least secure, most avoidant, and most resistant in their initial teacher-child relationship were the children who moved the most rapidly towards security. Children who moved the most rapidly towards security were the least resistant, and most likely to seek comfort within their teacher-child relationships by the final data collection point.     

Coping with background anger in early childhood

Normative patterns, individual styles, and developmental changes in coping with background anger (anger between others) were examined in preschoolers. Live models expressed verbalized anger toward each other while pairs of same-sex friends played in an adjacent room. 85 4- and 5-year-olds participated, playing took place in the presence of mothers, and a 7-episode sequence of background conditions (no emotion, positive, no emotion, anger, no emotion, positive, no emotion) described the experimental situation. Children were also interviewed concerning their feelings during others' anger. Preschoolers evidenced heightened arousal, that is, greater distress, social sharing, preoccupation, and positive affect, concurrent with exposure to background anger. Increased verbal aggressiveness in play occurred in the period following exposure. Coping styles initially identified from behavioral emotional responses to the adults' quarrel were further delineated by contrasts on other aspects of functioning. Concerned emotional responders (46%) showed negative emotions concurrent with exposure, and later reported that they had felt sad during the fight and wanted to intervene. Unresponsive children (15%) showed no evidence of emotion, but later reported that they were angry. Ambivalent responders (35%) showed high emotional arousal during exposure, typified by both positive and negative emotions. Later they reported feeling happy but disregulated and were most likely to become physically and verbally aggressive in play with a friend. Analyses on a subsample (N = 43) also seen as toddlers showed that responses to background anger changed markedly, but precursors of preschoolers' coping styles were evident in toddlers' behavioral responses.     

大学生基本情绪识别眼动研究

情绪识别是近年来情绪心理学研究领域中日趋引人注目的主题。本研究采用眼动记录技术探讨四种基本情绪的眼动特征。结果发现：大学生在识别基本情绪快乐、恐惧、悲伤、愤怒时,注视次数和平均注视时间差异不显著;最大瞳孔距离和平均瞳孔距离差异不显著;总注视时间差异显著,其中识别愤怒、悲伤情绪所需要的总注视时间较长,而识别恐惧的总注视时间最短。     

Enhancing attachment organization among maltreated children: results of a randomized clinical trial

Young children who have experienced early adversity are at risk for developing disorganized attachments. The efficacy of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an intervention targeting nurturing care among parents identified as being at risk for neglecting their young children, was evaluated through a randomized clinical trial. Attachment quality was assessed in the Strange Situation for 120 children between 11.7 and 31.9 months of age (M = 19.1, SD = 5.5). Children in the ABC intervention showed significantly lower rates of disorganized attachment (32%) and higher rates of secure attachment (52%) relative to the control intervention (57% and 33%, respectively). These results support the efficacy of the ABC intervention in enhancing attachment quality among parents at high risk for maltreatment.     

Changes in Child–Teacher Relationships in a Therapeutic Preschool Program

The purpose of this paper was to examine the processes and outcomes of teacher–child attachment relationship formation in a therapeutic preschool. Although the average child did not form a secure teacher–child attachment relationship, as a group and over time children became more secure in their teacher–child attachment relationships. Children who were least secure, most avoidant, and most resistant in their initial teacher–child relationship were the children who moved the most rapidly towards security. Children who moved the most rapidly towards security were the least resistant, and most likely to seek comfort within their teacher–child relationships by the final data collection point.