Toddlers’ understanding of basic emotions: identification, labeling and causality / La comprensión temprana de las emociones básicas: identificación, etiquetado y causalidad

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the early acquisition pattern of the understanding of basic emotions. Many studies indicate that three-year-old children identify emotions such as joy or sadness, but it is not known how this knowledge arises. Fifty-seven boys and girls between 21 and 32 months were assessed using the Brunet-Lezine-R developmental scale (BL-R) (Josse, 1997) and the Affective knowledge Test (AKT) (Denham, 1986). Through this test we evaluated the children’s knowledge of four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) in three of its components (identification, causality and linguistic labeling). In order to track knowledge acquisition longitudinally, a small subgroup of 19 children was evaluated again six months later. The result of the evaluation by emotions and components allows some conclusions: first, the emotion that older children better understand is anger, followed by happiness and sadness. Second, the first component that children manage is the identification of facial expressions. They then progressively incorporate knowledge about typical causality, and finally, the linguistic labels together with some understanding of atypical causality. The results are discussed from a developmental point of view. This typical developmental pattern also allows some educational and clinical implications.