Children's Social Competence and Nonverbal Encoding and Decoding of Emotions

Abstract

Identified thirty-three 9- to 12-year-olds with above- or below-average levels of social competence on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist and tested their encoding accuracy (i.e., the degree to which others could assess their facial expressions when the children were exposed to a series of affect-inducing film clips). The clips were chosen for their effectiveness at evoking five primary categories of emotion: anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, and combined fear/surprise. We also assessed subjects' ability at decoding the facial expressions of a sample group of stimulus persons. Girls with high social competence were more accurate at encoding and decoding than their less competent, same-sex peers; boys showed little difference according to their level of social competence.