The Developmental Trajectory of Children’s Emotion Understanding in Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Emotion understanding (EU) develops rapidly during early childhood and predicts children’s social and emotional competence. The acquisition of EU skills occurs along a developmental time frame, with children mastering more basic skills (e.g., labeling) before obtaining more advanced EU skills (e.g., understanding mixed emotions). The current research reports on a series of tasks measuring eight core EU components that typically emerge during early childhood: (I) emotion labeling, (II) emotion identification, (III) understanding of desire-based emotions, (IV) emotion inferences in stereotypical situations, (V) emotion inferences based on personal preference, (VI) emotions based on false-beliefs, (VII) emotion display rules, and (VIII) understanding of mixed emotions that were administered to 231 children who varied in age from 10 to 67 months, as part of a longitudinal study designed to examine whether EU might predict children’s emotional adjustment after the birth of their infant sibling. The wide age range of children required the creation of an assessment battery of EU tasks to assess children’s EU. In the current report, we examined the developmental function of EU over early childhood using a cohort sequential approach, in addition to testing the validity of the EU assessment with other indicators of children’s social understanding.

Participants included 231 firstborn children participating in a longitudinal investigation of family adjustment after the birth of a sibling. EU assessments for each of the eight components were administered to children at three time points: last trimester of the mothers’ pregnancy (prenatal), 4 and 12 months after the infant’s birth. Children were on average 29.92 months old, SD = 10.16 (range = 10 - 67), at the first time of measurement. Children were scored 1 = pass or 0 = fail for each component, and a summary score of EU was created for each participant at each of the three time points by summing the number of the eight components children passed, which ranged from 0 to 8.

Each component was rank-ordered at each of the three times based on the number of children who passed each component, resulting in the following sequence: (1) emotion identification, (2) understanding of desire-based emotions, (3) emotion labeling, (4) emotion inferences in stereotypical emotion situations, (5) emotion inferences based on personal preference, (6) emotion display rules, (7) mixed emotions, and (8) emotions based on false-beliefs (see Table 1). Children were then divided into three age cohorts (1-, 2-, and 3-year-old cohorts) starting at the prenatal time point and included in a cohort sequential analysis, which allowed us to approximate a developmental growth trajectory of EU across 1 to 5 years (see Figure 1). Results revealed that children’s EU development followed a linear developmental function, providing further support for a developmental sequence of EU based on the order of the tasks administered here. EU scores were also correlated with children’s theory of mind understanding and empathy providing further validity of the EU assessment battery.

Authors

• Lin Tan, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Brenda L Volling, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Richard Gonzalez, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Labounty, Lewis & Clark College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren Rosenberg, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author