Poster #205 - Does Labeling Emotion Predict Expressive Control When Disappointed?

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Being able to label feelings predicts better emotion regulation and is featured in early childhood socio-emotional learning programs (Domitrovich et al., 2007; Izard et al., 2001). It predicts adult negative emotion damping, even at the neural level (Kircanski et al., 2012; Lieberman et al., 2007; Pennebaker & Chung, 2011). Does young children’s emotion labeling predict their ability to minimize negative emotion? We studied 5-year-olds’ emotion labeling and nonverbal emotion expressions during the disappointment task (Cole, 1986). We tested whether using a specific emotion label to describe the feeling of getting a wrong prize predicted less negative emotion and more positive emotion during the disappointment, especially when getting the wrong prize.

Participants were 92 5-year-olds (54.3% male; Mage = 69.59 months, SDage = 2.52) from economically strained, rural and semi-rural families. The disappointment occurred after children completed a battery of boring tasks. The disappointment task had 5 segments: child received wrong prize from the Experimenter (30s), child was then left alone (30s), child was interviewed by a different Experimenter (variable length), the mother joined the child (120s), and child received the most favorite prize. Two separate teams coded children’s (a) angry and happy nonverbal emotion expressions across segments and (b) self-reported emotion during the interview. We calculated percentage of time (total seconds) of each emotion for each segment. We classified self-reported emotion using Dunn’s ISL system: specific emotion term, vague emotion term, reference to internal state but not emotion, no reference to any internal state, and no response. Reliability estimates for both teams were in the acceptable range.

When receiving the wrong prize from the experimenter (segment 1), children displayed more happy (M = 26.23, SD = 28.71) than angry emotion (M = 16.23, SD = 18.07), t(91) = 2.77, p = 0.01. When receiving the correct prize (segment 5), they displayed more happy expressions (M = 45.07, SD = 31.10) than when receiving the wrong one (M = 26.36, SD = 28.71), t(91) = -4.81, p < 0.00. They spent equal time displaying anger and happiness when alone. During the interview (segment 3), all children responded without prompting about how they felt; a modest majority (54.30%) used a specific emotion term. Of those children, 47 (94%) described a negative state (e.g., mad). If children did not provide a specific term, they were prompted (“Is that like happy or sad or mad?”); the majority of prompted responses were also negative.

Only children’s labeling of a specific negative emotion term when prompted was correlated with happy displays, r(50) = 0.40, p < 0.05. Children who labeled specific negative emotions when prompted spent more time displaying positive emotion throughout the task, particularly when given the wrong prize. This also appeared related to less time displaying anger but this was not significant.

We present additional results as well as discuss the fact that only some children readily provide a specific emotion term to describe their experience and why only prompted responses related to actual nonverbal emotion expressions, indicative of masking.

Authors

• Mary Samantha English, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Kayla M McCreadie, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Marie Armstrong, UNC-Charlotte
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pamela M. Cole, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author