If You're Happy and You Know It: Positive Moods Reduce Age‐Related Differences in False Memory

When tested in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, children typically exhibit fewer false memories than do adolescents or adults. Here, participants’ moods and the valence of word lists were manipulated to explore the mechanism responsible for this developmental reversal in memory performance. Children (7‐ to 8‐year‐olds), adolescents (11‐ to 12‐year‐olds), and young adults (18‐ to 22‐year‐olds; N = 270) were assigned to one of three induced mood conditions and were presented with emotional word lists. In negative moods, adolescents and adults falsely recalled more negative information than did children, showing the typical developmental reversal effect. This effect, however, was eliminated when participants were in positive moods. The findings provide support for associative‐activation theory and have important implications for our understanding of the development of emotional false memories.     

Support provider mood and familiar versus unfamiliar events: An investigation of social support quality

Much of what communication scholars know about the production of effective comforting messages comes from the constructivist framework of Applegate (1980), Burleson (1985), and others. This paper extends this framework by addressing two questions put forth by scholars in this area, namely, what is the influence of cognition‐inhibiting situational variables such as mood on the generation of sophisticated, person‐centered comforting messages, and is this influence greater in situations requiring increased cognitive processing (Burleson & Planalp, 2000). In this study, support providers’ moods were manipulated before they were presented with either a familiar or an unfamiliar hypothetical support scenario. As hypothesized, results showed that supportive messages provided in response to a familiar situation were significantly more sophisticated than messages provided in response to an unfamiliar situation. Participants exposed to the happy mood induction encoded significantly more sophisticated comforting messages than did participants exposed to the sad mood induction. No effect was found regarding a two‐way interaction between the support provider's mood and the recipient's situation. Results are discussed within the constructivist framework for social support research, and directions for future investigations of social support are suggested.     

A developmental analysis of elementary school-aged children's concepts of pride and embarrassment

Developmental changes in conditions engendering pride and embarrassment were explored. Subjects included 41 adults and 189 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Subjects were asked to report events that had made them feel proud, embarrassed, happy, and sad. Content analyses of responses concerning pride and embarrassment indicated that references to noncontingent, uncontrollable events decreased with age, but most 5-year-olds understood that feelings of pride and, to a lesser extent, embarrassment result primarily from outcomes controlled by and contingent on one's own behavior or characteristics. Responses of children in all 4 age groups and adults suggest that an audience is important for both pride and embarrassment, but particularly for embarrassment. An audience and external reinforcement were more important in children's than in adults' reports of pride. Developmental change was found in the standards used to evaluate emotional experiences; references to social comparison increased with age and references to mastery decreased.     

Infants' perception of dynamic affective expressions: do infants distinguish specific expressions?

Seven-month-old infants' perception of positive (happy, interested) and negative (angry, sad) affective expressions was investigated using a preferential looking procedure (n = 20 in each of 6 conditions). The infants saw two videotaped facial expressions and heard a single vocal expression concordant with one of the facial expressions. The voice on the soundtrack was played 5 s out of synchrony with the ongoing affective visual display. Infants participated in one of six conditions (all possible pairs of the four expressive events). Infants' visual fixations to the affectively concordant and affectively discordant displays were recorded. Infants looked longer at the affectively concordant displays than at the affectively discordant displays in all conditions except the happy/sad and interested/sad conditions. For these two comparisons, facial discrimination was demonstrated by the infants' preferential looking at happy and interested expressions compared to the sad expression. Thus, 7-month-old infants discriminate among happy, interested, angry, and sad expressions, demonstrating differentiation among specific, dynamic expressions. The results are discussed in terms of the information specifying facial and vocal affect and the possible role of familiarity in learning to differentiate among affective expressions during infancy.     

Assessing the concordance between child reports and adult observations of single and mixed emotion in children’s drawings of themselves or another child

The present study assessed concordance between child reported and adult observed strategies to depict single and mixed emotion in the same human figure drawings. 205 children (104 boys, 101 girls) aged 6 years 2 months to 8 years 3 months formed two age groups (6 years 2 months–7 years 2 months and 7 years 3 months–8 years 3 months) across two conditions drawing either themselves or another child. They heard vignettes designed to elicit single and mixed emotion and drew a baseline drawing, counterbalanced happy and sad, and a mixed emotion drawing. Categories of children’s verbal reports and adults’ observations were similar with some variation of use by condition, age group and emotion type. Mixed emotion strategies were more similar to those observed and reported in happy drawings. Findings are discussed in relation to a framework theory of art and social display rules.     

Thinking about the past: early knowledge about links between prior experience, thinking, and emotion

In two studies the authors investigated the situations where 3- to 7-year-olds and adults (N = 152) will connect a person's current feelings to the past, especially to thinking or being reminded about a prior experience. Study 1 presented stories featuring a target character who felt sad, mad, or happy after an event in the past and who many days later felt that same negative or positive emotion upon seeing a cue related to the prior incident. For some story endings, the character's emotion upon seeing the cue matched, or was congruent, with the current situation, whereas for others, the emotion mismatched the present circumstances. Participants were asked to explain the cause of each character's current feelings. As a further comparison, children and adults listened to behavior cuing stories and provided explanations for characters' present actions. Study 2 presented emotional scenarios that varied by emotion-situation fit (whether the character's emotion matched the current situation), person-person fit (whether the character's emotion matched another person's), and past history information (whether information about the character's past was known). Results showed that although there were several significant developments with increasing age, even most 3-year-olds demonstrated some knowledge about connections between past events and present emotions and between thinking and feeling. Indeed, children 5 years and younger revealed strikingly cogent understanding about historical-mental influences in certain situations, especially where they had to explain why a person, who had experienced a negative event in the past, was currently feeling sad or mad in a positive situation. These findings help underwrite a more general account of the development of children's coherent understandings of life history, mind, and emotion.     

Maternal responsiveness and child compliance: the role of mood as a mediator

Parpal and Maccoby demonstrated that responsive maternal play increases children's compliance. They suggested that positive mood induction might be one mechanism mediating this effect. Study 1 tested the hypothesis that a responsive maternal play procedure would indeed induce a positive mood. 32 4-year-olds and their mothers participated. Half of the mothers were trained in a responsive play technique prior to a laboratory play session; half of them were not trained. Postplay self-reports of mood indicated that responsive play increased positive mood but did not affect arousal levels. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that experimentally induced positive mood increases compliance in the types of tasks reported in the Parpal and Maccoby's research. 24 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to either a positive or negative mood induction and then tested for response to maternal compliance demands. Children induced into positive moods complied more and complied with shorter latencies than children induced into negative moods. The fact that maternal responsiveness induces a positive mood points to a mechanism that may be significant in both attachment and socialization beyond infancy.     

教师权义与自身发展

作为教师,怎样发展我们自己?首先必须要认识到当教师的重要性,其次才谈发展。美国帕墨尔在《教学勇气——漫步教师心灵》一书中说道:"在经历了若干年的教师工作之后,我得到了一个令人惶恐的结论,教学的成功和失败,‘我’是决定性的因素。我个人采用的方法和每天的情绪,是造成学习气氛和情境的主因。身为老师,我具有极大的力量能够让孩子们活得愉快或悲惨,我可以是制造痛苦的工具,也可能是启发灵感的媒介。我能让人丢脸,也能叫人开心,能伤人,也可以救人。"     

Affective states and task performance in naive and prompted children

Using a mental imagery procedure, positive or negative emotions were experimentally induced in 5- and 10-year-old children. In the case of the younger children, the induced emotions influenced their performance on a subsequent memory task, i.e. happy children did better than sad ones. Ten-year-olds, however, seemed to perform at an optimal level in both emotional circumstances. It was argued that these older children, with the help of their firmly established general knowledge about the possible effects of emotion on performance, spontaneously countered the effects of the emotion induction procedure. Activation of the young children’s latent knowledge of these effects, simply by questioning them on this point beforehand, produced, even in their case, an optimal performance in both the happy and sad conditions.     

Is There a Downside to Anticipating the Upside? Children's and Adults’ Reasoning About How Prior Expectations Shape Future Emotions

Four- to 10-year-olds and adults (N = 205) responded to vignettes involving three individuals with different expectations (high, low, and no) for a future event. Participants judged characters’ pre-outcome emotions, as well as predicted and explained their feelings following three events (positive, attenuated, and negative). Although adults rated high-expectation characters more negatively than low-expectation characters after all outcomes, children shared this intuition starting at 6–7 years for negative outcomes, 8–10 years for attenuated, and never for positive. Comparison to baseline (no expectation) indicated that understanding the costs of high expectations emerges first and remains more robust across age than recognition that low expectations carry benefits. Explanation analyses further clarified this developing awareness about the relation between thoughts and emotions over time.     

莫扎特音乐对幼儿表情识别能力的影响

本研究考察莫扎特音乐以及不同诱发唤醒度和不同情绪类型的音乐对3～5岁幼儿面部表情(高兴、悲伤和中性表情)识别的影响。结果表明:与同是高唤醒度正性情绪的音乐相比,具有高结构性和周期性的莫扎特音乐反而会对幼儿的表情识别产生干扰;而聆听低唤醒度负性情绪的音乐有利于幼儿大脑达到适当的觉醒水平,进入适当的情绪状态,从而对其表情识别产生促进作用。     

Development in children's interpretation of pitch cues to emotions

Young infants respond to positive and negative speech prosody (A. Fernald, 1993), yet 4-year-olds rely on lexical information when it conflicts with paralinguistic cues to approval or disapproval (M. Friend, 2003). This article explores this surprising phenomenon, testing one hundred eighteen 2- to 5-year-olds' use of isolated pitch cues to emotions in interactive tasks. Only 4- to 5-year-olds consistently interpreted exaggerated, stereotypically happy or sad pitch contours as evidence that a puppet had succeeded or failed to find his toy (Experiment 1) or was happy or sad (Experiments 2, 3). Two- and 3-year-olds exploited facial and body-language cues in the same task. The authors discuss the implications of this late-developing use of pitch cues to emotions, relating them to other functions of pitch.     

初中生情绪调节方式调查研究

运用情绪调节方式问卷对189名初中生进行调查,考察其情绪调节方式的情况及特点。结果显示:(1)初中生总体上感受正情绪快乐、兴趣的较多,负情绪感受悲伤、厌恶的较多,恐惧最少。不同性别、年级的情绪感受有所差别;(2)初中生在感受正性情绪时出现比较多的增强调节(重视和宣泄),在感受负性情绪时出现比较多的减弱调节(忽视和抑制),同时更多地通过原因调节(忽视和重视)来调节自己的情绪;(3)初中男女生在负性情绪的宣泄上存在显著差异,女生更多地采用宣泄的调解方式;(4)情绪调节方式在年级上存在差异,表现在对负性情绪的重视调节、宣泄调节上。     

Effects of Mexican Immigrant Parents’ Daily Workplace Discrimination on Child Behavior and Family Functioning

This study investigated Mexican immigrant parents’ reports of perceived workplace discrimination and their children's behavior, parents’ moods, and parent–child interactions. Parents of one hundred and thirty‐eight 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children were asked to complete one survey daily for 2 weeks (N = 1,592 days). On days when fathers perceived discrimination, fathers and mothers reported more externalizing child behaviors, and mothers reported fewer positive child behaviors. When mothers perceived discrimination, they reported more externalizing child behaviors; fathers reported more internalizing child behaviors. Parents reported worse mood on days with perceived discrimination. Perceived discrimination was not strongly related to parent–child interactions. For fathers, but less so for mothers, those whose psychological acculturation indicated separation had more negative relations between daily perceived workplace discrimination and child and family outcomes.     

Children's integration of facial and situational cues to emotion

Children at 4 age levels (3-5, 6-7, 8-9, and 10-12 years) were shown a series of pictures in which facial and situational cues were (a) congruent, (b) conflicting, or (c) presented alone. Children rated the type (happy or sad) and intensity of the emotion felt by each character. Developmental changes in the relative weights assigned to facial and situational cues were examined using Anderson's information integration approach. The results showed that children's reliance on situational cues increased with age, but their reliance on facial expression decreased with age. Analysis of individual children's ratings indicated a developmental increase in the tendency to integrate facial and situational cues. Children's ability to resolve the conflicting cues (through stories) also increased with age, but there were no age differences in the types of resolutions used. At all age levels, children were less likely to resolve pictures involving an inconsistent positive expression than pictures showing an inconsistent negative expression.     

“欢愉之辞难工,穷苦之言易好”评说

韩愈认为“欢愉之辞难工,穷苦之言易好”,事实上“欢愉之辞”未必就比“穷苦之言”难以写得好.“欢愉之辞”的产生与时代有关,与文体有关,也与作家的个性有关.因此,“欢愉之辞”自有其存在的必然性与合理性.一味地提倡“穷苦之言”而忽视“欢愉之辞”,无论是对于文学创作而言,还是对于文学接受而言,都是极为不利的.     

The Effects of Brief and Elaborate Mood Induction Procedures on the Size of Young Children’s Drawings

It has been claimed that children’s drawings following brief mood induction procedures differ in size depending on positive or negative mood. However there are conflicting findings in the field regarding the existence and direction of scaling changes. Such inconsistencies may be the result of methodological differences or may indicate that this phenomenon is unreliable. This study was designed to investigate the size of young children’s (n = 80, median age 6 years 1 month) human figure drawings. The focus was on both the surface area and height of drawings elicited in a clinical context using brief or elaborate mood induction procedures. Children drew larger pictures under both negative and positive affect conditions, relative to a prior baseline condition. Positive mood elicited slightly larger drawings than negative mood. However, such mood effects were only significant when the affect inductions were brief, and were not found when the affect inductions were elaborated. It is suggested that brief mood inductions can alter the young child’s drawing response in predictable ways. The importance of considering the type of emotion‐eliciting procedure when interpreting children’s drawings is discussed.     

农村青年的社会情绪研究

农村青年是农村的未来和希望,是推动农村发展的重要力量。他们所表现出类的社会情绪状况如何,决定了整个农村的精神风貌和未来发展趋向,也影响着整个民族的前途和命运。随着改革开放的深入发展,农村青年的心理状态、社会情绪与传统的老辈农民有很大的不同．正呈现出十分复杂的状况。既有积极的、也有消极的,对比鲜明。因此,必须全面把握农村青年的社会情绪的变化,采取正确的对策进行引导．才能确保新农村建设的社会主义性质和方向。     

Staff Preferences in Children with Mental Retardation

Staff at a residential facility for children with mental retardation rated their most‐preferred and least‐preferred children on a list of child characteristics. Staff‐perceived characteristics that differed significantly between the most‐ and least‐preferred children were subjective traits involving physical attributes, mood, behaviour, and social qualities. The remaining characteristics comprised objective developmental traits that did not differentiate the two groups. Small children were more likely to be rated most‐preferred, and large children least‐preferred. Staff tended to discount positive traits in their least‐preferred children and tolerate negative attributes in their most‐preferred children. Some children were rated as both most‐ and least‐preferred by different caregivers. These findings add to the understanding of staff perceptions and attitudes and have implications for intervention.     

An experimental manipulation of retrospectively defined earned and continuous attachment security

Recent longitudinal data suggest that retrospectively defined earned-secures are not more likely than continuous-secures to have been anxiously attached to their mothers in infancy and indeed experience high-quality maternal parenting in childhood. Such findings leave unanswered the question of why earned-secures report negative childhood experiences. On the basis of speculation that earned-security may result from depression-related biases in the recall of early experiences, this report describes the effects of an experimental mood induction on the valence of young adults' (18-25 years) life narratives as assessed in the Adult Attachment Interview. Among secure adults, individuals in a sadness condition were more likely to be classified as earned-secure; happy participants were more likely to be classified as continuous-secure. Induced mood was unrelated to security versus insecurity.