2-187 - Emotional Competence in Children's Every Day Lives: Implications for Positive Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The capacity to understand, express, and regulate emotions successfully and appropriately has profound implications for children’s social functioning and well-being more generally. This capacity, often referred to as emotional competence, becomes more sophisticated across development and is shaped both by children’s experiences and interactions with others. While much research has focused on the links between emotional competence and maladjustment, far less attention has been directed toward emotional competence and positive development, particularly in relation to processes key to adaptive social functioning. The four presentations in this symposium do just that, exploring the relations among core emotional capacities and positive outcomes in diverse samples of children and adolescents. First, Thompson et al. take a multi-faceted approach to understanding children’s early prosocial motivations by examining, across two studies, the associations between emotional and prosocial responding in children, longitudinally and in relation to maternal sensitivity and shared emotion-related discourse. In the second and third presentations, Hernandez et al. and Labella et al. describe similar investigations of the links among emotional expressivity, emotion regulation, and socio-emotional competence in the school environment, albeit in very different populations, one low risk and one high-risk. Finally, Dickerson et al. present findings from an international sample of children growing up under conditions of chronic adversity regarding how their empathic concern may be shaped by their emotion recognition abilities. Together, the studies provide new insight into the complex ways that specific facets of emotional competence may shape a range of outcomes critical for positive social functioning.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chairs

• Kelli Dickerson, University of California, Irvine

• Jodi Quas, UC Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Impaired Emotion Recognition in High-Risk Youth: Implications for Empathic Concern - Presenting Author: Kelli Dickerson, University of California, Irvine; Jodi Quas, UC Irvine; Richard Matthew, UC Irvine; Connor Harron, UCI

• The Role of Emotion in the Development of Prosocial Motivation - Presenting Author: Ross Thompson, University of California, Davis; Emily Newton, WestEd; Abby Christine Winer Schachner, SRI International

• Positive Emotional Expressivity and Child Maladjustment in Kindergarten: Differences in Expression Across Contexts - Presenting Author: Maciel M. Hernández, Arizona State University; Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University; Carlos Valiente, ASU; Tracy Spinrad, Arizona State University; Rebecca H Berger, ASU; Sarah VanSchyndel, ASU; Kassondra Silva, ASU; Jody Southworth, ASU

• Emotion Reactivity and Regulation among Young Homeless Children: Associations with Cumulative Risk and Classroom Functioning - Presenting Author: Madelyn Labella, University of Minnesota; Rebecca Distefano, University of Minnesota; Jillian Merrick, University of Minnesota; Ann Masten, University of Minnesota