Poster #115 - Making Meaning out of sad Experiences in Early Childhood

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Across early childhood, children develop the ability to make meaning out of emotional experiences by sharing personal stories (Engel, 1995; Reese et al., 2010). Children included more internal states in sad accounts because negative experiences require more sense-making (Lagattuta & Wellman, 2002). Scant research has assessed the extent to which children independently shift stories of negative experiences to positive outcomes or the types of resolution strategies young children employ when turning their sad stories into something positive. We examined the ways in which preschoolers attempt to reframe negative experiences and differences in internal state language in sad stories that shift to a positive emotional tone versus those that do not.

Fifty-four children (31 girls) attending a laboratory preschool at a small liberal arts college told stories about a “time when you were happy/sad” within one month of their 3rd (N = 10), 4th (N = 24) or 5th (N = 20) birthday to a familiar researcher. The researcher provided an enthusiastic and engaged listening style but utilized minimal scaffolding. Stories were audio-recorded and transcribed according to subject-predicate units. We coded internal states in NVivo: total cognitive states attributed to self, other, collective, and the listener (r’s: .89 - .99; Peterson & Biggs, 2001; Zaman & Fivush, 2011); and total and unique emotion talk attributed to self, other, and collective (r’s: .92 - 1.00; Adams et al, 1995; Fabes et al., 2001). We also coded whether each child’s sad story shifted to a positive emotional tone, stayed sad or was indeterminate (k = .97). We subsequently developed a resolution strategies coding scheme applied to positive shifts (See Figure 2).

We conducted a series of two-factor mixed-design ANOVAs with internal states as the dependent variable measured within-subjects (in happy/sad stories) and age (3, 4, 5) as the between-subjects factor. Children reported more emotion terms in sad (M = 2.25, SD = 2.18) than in happy stories (M = 1.48, SD = 1.63), F(1, 50) = 9.12, p = .004, d = 0.40. Children reported more unique emotions in sad (M = 1.58, SD = 1.38) than in happy stories (M = 1.06, SD = 1.04), F(1, 50) = 7.801, p = .007, d = 0.43. There were no differences in cognitive states and the main effect for age was not statistically significant in any analyses. A series of independent samples t-tests indicated that children reported more emotion terms, unique emotions, and cognitive states in stories that shifted to a positive tone compared to those that did not (See Figure 1). Descriptive results indicated that five-year-olds included proportionally more positive resolution strategies, particularly higher-order strategies (See Figure 2).

Findings are consistent with previous work (Lagattuta & Wellman, 2002) and contribute to research on narrative development in early childhood by attending to the unique ways in which children reframe sad experiences. Encouraging young children to share personal accounts of sad experiences may foster attentiveness to emotions and cognitive states that allow children to better manage and make sense of these inevitable experiences across development.

Authors

• Alice J. Davidson, Rollins College
  Presenting Author

• Megan Welliver, Rollins College
  Non-Presenting Author