Conceptual Bases of Research of a Verbal and Nonverbal Pattern of Children’s Fears

Abstract

Emotional saturation and dynamic nature of the modern life create psychological pressure not only in adults, but also in children. This is largely attributed to the ongoing social transformations that increase the demands for the intellectual, psychological, emotional, and physical abilities of people and their abilities to culturally regulate their own emotional states. The are the least secured participants of this process as their minds and bodies are unstable, defenseless and highly susceptive to the external impacts: their vulnerability and lack of confidence result in acquired anxiety and fears. Children of the XXI century are struggling to cope with fears that were nonexistent in the last century. The increased amount and complexity of school curricula, computerization, TV news of accidents, destructions, and disasters, broadcasted horror and action movies, criminalized living conditions, all that forms a new psychological reality in the minds of modern children.The problem of children's fears, commonly regarded as a thoroughly explored one (Garbuzov, 1990; Zaharov, 2000; Prihogan, 2000; Spivakovskaja, 2000; Jersild & Holmes, 1935; Girard-Fresard, 2009 etc.), acquired new forms and meanings in the swift ness of changes Russia endured in the last decades.Let it be noted, that when writing about children, a prominent Russian scientist V.M. Bekhterev pointed out 'the susceptive and impressionable' nature of the child's soul. The author urges always to consider the exceptional impressionability of the child, especially in such matters as the psychological health care. Sometimes a careless word said in front of a child about a murder or other terrible incident can disturb the child's night sleep or become a subject of nightmares. That is why environment plays a great role in the upbringing of children (Bekhterev, 1999, p. 153).V.K. Vilunas claims that the intensity of a child's fear depends on individual features of mental development and current social conditions in which the formation of child's personality occurs (Vilunas, 1976, p. 35).In this work, devoted to children's emotional states and, in particular, children's fears, we described multidimensional approach to exploration of the emotional phenomena and identified the types of multidimensionality in the studies of emotional states. Dimensional multiplicity (Wundt, 2007; Woodworth, 1950; Schlosberg, 1954) represents the creation of an emotional space, which can grow from one, two, three, or more dimensions based on homogeneous bipolar characteristics (attributes) of emotions. Modality-base multiplicity (B. Spinoza) represents differentiation of the primary, basic emotions, the various combination of which shapes other kinds of emotions. Complex multiplicity (Izard, 1980) combines neurophysiologic processes, expression, body movements and subjective experiences.Th e multidimensional complex we have created comprises the following measurements: quantitative - qualitative; frequency - intensity of the experienced emotions; spatial (location, area) and temporal (past, present, future) localization of emotional experience; the projection of emotions onto the micro and macro social environment; moral evaluation of the experienced emotions and self-regulating abilities in the context of their culturally acceptable forms.An integrated structural-typological classification of fears is developed where all of the children's fears are organized by their genesis: conditioned (formed by one's own experience), induced (formed by the people from the immediate social circle, mass media, peers), internally generated. This classification also includes their specifications on the basis of ethnicity and mentality. Conditioned fears are the fears caused by external factors serving as the sources of emotional states: the biologically conditioned fear (of animals, natural and other phenomena occurring in children's everyday life), socially and technologically conditioned fears. …