Preschool Children's Coding of Facial Expression of Emotions: Humanistic-psychological Approach

Abstract

The aim of our research was to analyse the coding of facial expression of basic emotions by preschool children (happiness, surprise, sadness, fear) from the point of view of the humanistic-psychological approach. The coding performance was studied in the situations of «communication with peers», in «children groups», where each preschool child both was observed from the peer and decoded the facial expression of the peer himself. Following factors were treated as basic factors of successful coding: 1) long term face-to-face communication experience with peers attending to the same kindergarten group (familiar children); 2) lack of the interaction and communication experience with the target (unfamiliar children). 100 children from four different kindergartens of senior preschool took part in our research (6-7 years old; 49 boys and 51 girls).