Children’s and Adults’ Beliefs About the Influence of Emotional States on Attention

• In Event: Emotion Understanding Across Development: Implications for Interpersonal and Educational Contexts

Abstract

Emotions play a significant role in a wide range of learning outcomes (see Pekrun & Stephens, 2012). Depending on the context and demands of the task, emotional states can either help or hinder learning. Early in development, children begin to understand the impact of emotions on academic performance. For instance, even 5-year-olds predict that being sad will impair academic performance (Amsterlaw et al., 2009). But emotions vary not only in valence (e.g., happy vs. sad) but also in intensity (e.g., little sad vs. very sad). Here, we provide the first test for whether children and adults appreciate the role of emotional intensity in impacting cognitive performance.

In the present study we focused on children’s and adults’ beliefs about how emotional states influence the ability to pay attention in school. In a preregistered study, we presented 5- to 7-year-old children (N= 90) and adults (N=55) with vignettes in which two characters experiencing emotional states of different valence (happy vs. sad) and intensity (high vs. low) need to pay attention to a school topic. Participants were asked to predict which character was going to be better at paying attention to the teacher. We expected that, across all age groups, participants would predict better attention for happy characters than sad characters. We did not have formal hypotheses for intensity’s role in positive emotional states. We fitted three mixed-effects logistic regression models, one for each category of emotion contrasts. Model 1 (items with same intensity, different valence) yielded no significant main effects or interactions, indicating that all participants strongly predicted better attentional performance for positive over negative emotions, regardless of emotional intensity. Model 2 (items with same valence, different intensity) revealed significant main effects of Valence (χ2 (1) = 39.47, p < .001), and Age Group (χ2 (3) = 8.58, p = 0.035), and a significant Valence × Age Group interaction (χ2 (3) = 9.06, p = 0.028). As shown in Figure 1, participants predicted better attentional performance for the little sad character over the very sad character. We also found that, with increasing age, participants were more likely to choose the little happy over the very happy character. Model 3 (items comparing neutral to all four combinations of intensity and valence) yielded a main effect of Valence (χ2 (1) = 47.47, p < .001) and no significant interactions. As displayed in Figure 2, participants in all age groups strongly preferred the neutral state over negative emotional states, but they rarely selected the neutral character over the little happy character. Adults were significantly more likely to choose the neutral character over the very happy character than 5-year-olds, which suggests a shift in children’s understanding of the role of valence and intensity in emotions’ influence on attention.

These findings show a developing appreciation for the role of emotional intensity in impacting cognitive performance. The ability to reason about the links between emotion and cognition has likely implications for children’s and adults’ emotion regulation in learning contexts.

Authors

• Luis De la Viña, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Brandon Wade Goulding, University of Winnipeg

• Samuel Ronfard, University of Toronto