Development Of Emotion Understanding Research Articles

The development of emotion understanding in children: The importance of parents, teachers, and peers.

Emotion understanding (EU) develops through emotion socialization provided by children's social environments, but the relative importance of various socializing agents has not been determined. In this prospective study, the unique contributions of parents, teachers, and peers to changes in EU from 4 to 8 years of age were therefore investigated in a birth cohort sample of 924 Norwegian children (50.1% boys). A warm parent-child relationship at 4 years of age predicted increased EU at 6 years of age but not from 6 to 8 years of age. A close teacher-child relationship forecasted enhanced EU at both 6 and 8 years of age. The results are in accordance with previous research on parents' roles and bring new knowledge by underscoring the importance of teachers in children's development of EU. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Does executive function affect children's peer relationships more than emotion understanding? A Longitudinal study based on latent growth model

Many researchers argue that emotion understanding and executive function can help people establish and maintain positive peer relationships, but the existing empirical evidence supporting this assertion in preschool children remains inconclusive. This study aimed to investigate the impact of emotion understanding and executive function on children's peer relationships (specifically, acceptance and rejection) by utilizing a conditional latent growth model. Longitudinal data were collected in three time points within two years from a sample of 120 kindergarten children (Mage = 46.63 months, with 70 boys) in China. Our findings revealed a significant linear increase in both emotion understanding and executive function over time. The conditional latent growth model further showed that the initial level of emotion understanding and executive function positively predicted later peer acceptance, while the initial level of executive function negatively predicted peer rejection, even after accounting for covariates such as age, gender, family socioeconomic status, and vocabulary. Furthermore, children with faster growth rate of executive function were less likely to experience peer rejection. Intriguingly, the development of emotion understanding did not yield a discernible impact on peer relationships. Overall, these findings suggest that executive function plays a more crucial role than emotion understanding in facilitating positive peer relationships among Chinese preschool children, thereby highlighting the significance of executive function's developmental trends in social interactions.

The Impact of Gross Motor Skills on the Development of Emotion Understanding in Children Aged 3-6 Years: The Mediation Role of Executive Functions.

This study investigates the impact of gross motor skills on the development of emotion understanding and the role of executive function in the relation between gross motor skills and emotion understanding. A total of 662 children were tested for gross motor skills, emotion understanding, and executive function. Regression analysis showed that gross motor skills were significantly related to executive function. Multiple regression analyses showed that gross motor skills and executive function were significant predictors for emotion understanding. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that executive function mediated the impact of gross motor skills on emotion understanding. Gross motor skills contributed to emotion understanding by improving children's executive function. The findings imply that a pathway from gross motor skills to emotion understanding is mediated by executive function, which offers a novel perspective on the developmental mechanisms of children's emotion understanding.

Testing TIK (Tuning in to Kids) with TEC (Test of Emotion Comprehension): Does enhanced emotion socialization improve child emotion understanding?

This study examined the predictive link between enhanced parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) and children's emotional understanding. Parental ERSBs were enhanced using the Tuning in to Kids (TIK; Havighurst & Harley, 2007) parenting intervention, and children's emotional understanding was directly assessed using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons & Harris, 2000). 40 children in their final year of kindergarten and one of their parents participated in the study. TIK led to positive changes in parental expressive encouragement. All children showed statistically significant improvements in emotion understanding at six-month follow-up. As expected, parental expressive encouragement positively predicted children's development of emotional understanding from baseline to follow-up. Thus, when parents encouraged children to talk about emotions, children's emotional understanding improved. Unexpectedly, emotion-focused responses (warm but dismissive) negatively predicted children's development of emotion understanding, Children's emotional understanding did not improve as much when parents responded with comfort and distraction. Implications are discussed.

Study about the development of emotional understanding during conversation and related factors in children with hearing loss

Study about the development of emotional understanding during conversation and related factors in children with hearing loss

Social and Emotional Learning: A Critical Reflection

My purpose here is to offer some of my thoughts on the current field of social-emotional learning (SEL). I am coming from the perspective that schools are places where children develop the skills to create fulfilling academic/work lives and successful social relationships; schools should help to: (i) provide young people with the skills to achieve personal happiness and well-being throughout their lives; and (ii) educate their pupils about managing difficult times with confidence. Key to that success is the development of emotion understanding, and schools are seen to be important drivers in that learning process. But how do schools best teach such skills? Currently, the most popular mode is through the use of developed curricula that have been designed to teach different elements of emotion understanding. But how do those programmes map on to the current academic evidence of what emotion understanding is?

Intuitive Theories of Parenting and the Development of Emotion Understanding in Preschoolers

Emotion understanding develops intensively in preschool and junior school. Although the parent/family environment has been shown to affect the development of emotion understanding in children, very little research has examined examined how parents’ view upbringing and education and how they are related to their child’s emotion understanding, given that the intuitive theories of parenting are reflected in actual parent behavior. This study fills this gap in the literature and examines the links between children’s ability to understand emotions and their parents’ intuitive theories of parenting. The sample was 171 5- to 6-year-old children and their parents. Analyses revealed a significant relation between intuitive theories of parenting and children’s emotion understanding. In particular, the intuitive attitude of uninvolved parenting was associated with the understanding of mental causes of emotions and the overall level of emotion understanding in preschool children. Integrating these results will allow us to reach more informed conclusions about the role of parental beliefs in the development of emotion comprehension in preschool children.

The continuous impact of cognitive flexibility on the development of emotion understanding in children aged 4 and 5 years: A longitudinal study

The current study investigated the impact of cognitive flexibility on the development of emotion understanding using a longitudinal tracking study. A total of 98 children aged 4 and 5 years were tested for cognitive flexibility, emotion understanding, and verbal ability across three time points within a year. The cross-lagged analyses indicated that early cognitive flexibility played a predictive role in the development of emotion understanding. More precisely, cognitive flexibility at Time 1 predicted emotion understanding at Time 2 and Time 3, and cognitive flexibility at Time 2 predicted emotion understanding at Time 3. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that verbal ability mediated the impact of cognitive flexibility on emotion understanding. Early cognitive flexibility contributed to later emotion understanding by improving children’s verbal ability. These findings suggest that there is a verbal ability-mediated pathway from cognitive flexibility to emotion understanding that provides a new perspective for the development mechanism of children’s emotion understanding.

Factors Facilitating Early Emotion Understanding Development: Contributions to Individual Differences

Children’s emotion understanding is crucial for healthy social and academic development. The behaviors influenced by emotion understanding in childhood have received much attention, but less focus has been placed on factors that may predict individual differences in emotion understanding, the principal issue addressed in the current review. A more thorough understanding of the developmental underpinnings of this skill may allow for better prediction of emotion understanding, and for interventions to improve emotion understanding early in development. Here, we present theoretical arguments for the substantial roles of three aspects of children’s environments in the development of emotion understanding: family expressiveness, discussions about emotions, and language development, and we discuss how these are interrelated. Ultimately, this may aid in predicting the effects of environmental influences on the development of emotion understanding more broadly and the mechanisms by which they do so.

I know that voice! Mothers’ voices influence children’s perceptions of emotional intensity

The ability to interpret others’ emotions is a critical skill for children’s socioemotional functioning. Although research has emphasized facial emotion expressions, children are also constantly required to interpret vocal emotion expressed at or around them by individuals who are both familiar and unfamiliar to them. The current study examined how speaker familiarity, specific emotions, and the acoustic properties that comprise affective prosody influenced children’s interpretations of emotional intensity. Participants were 51 7- and 8-year-olds presented with speech stimuli spoken in happy, angry, sad, and nonemotional prosodies by both each child’s mother and another child’s mother unfamiliar to the target child. Analyses indicated that children rated their own mothers as more intensely emotional compared with the unfamiliar mothers and that this effect was specific to angry and happy prosodies. Furthermore, the acoustic properties predicted children’s emotional intensity ratings in different patterns for each emotion. The results are discussed in terms of the significance of the mother’s voice in children’s development of emotional understanding.

Screen time and the development of emotion understanding from age 4 to age 8: A community study.

Recent increase in children's screen activities has raised concerns that screen time may replace face-to-face interaction, and hence impair children's development of emotion understanding. This longitudinal community study of 960 Norwegian 4-year-olds, followed up at ages 6 and 8, examined bidirectional relations between screen use and emotion understanding. Results revealed that more screen time at age 4 predicted lower levels of emotion understanding at age 6. In addition, television in children's bedroom at age 6 forecasted lower levels of emotion understanding at age 8. The effect of TV watching on emotion understanding was gender moderated, with stronger effects of TV watching observed among girls, but no significant effects detected among boys. In contrast, gaming forecasted lower level of emotion understanding in boys, not girls. Results are discussed in the light of the importance of face-to-face interaction to preserve the development of social-emotional competence among young children. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? We know that children's screen activities correlate with poorer social competence and with decrease of the quantity and quality of interaction with parents and siblings. The capacity to understand emotions in others is primarily learned through interaction with primary caregivers, but little is known how children's screen use influences development of emotion understanding. What the present study adds? We found that more TV watching among girls at age 4 predicted lower levels of emotion understanding at age 6. Furthermore, TV in child's bedroom at age 6 forecasted lower levels of emotion understanding at age 8.

Emotional Understanding in Children with A Cochlear Implant.

Emotional understanding plays an important role in the physical and mental health of children. To determine whether the development of emotional understanding is delayed in children with a cochlear implant (CI), 30 children with a CI and 30 matched children with typical hearing aged between 3 and 9 years old completed three tasks (facial expression, tone expression and scene of emotion matching), in which they identified four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, and fear). The participants included 40 preschool children and 20 school-aged children. Compared with the children with typical hearing, the children with a CI were significantly delayed in the ability to understand emotion; the tone expression matching task was the most difficult task for all participants; and the school-aged children performed better than the preschool children, but this trend was only observed in the typical hearing group; and happiness was the easiest emotion to identify.

Development of emotion understanding and emotional perspective taking in early childhood

Development of emotion understanding and emotional perspective taking in early childhood

The understanding of emotion among young Chinese children

The development of emotion understanding in young Chinese preschoolers was examined. The overall developmental trend, as measured by the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), proved similar to that found among preschoolers in Western Europe. However, Chinese children performed better at understanding the distinction between real and apparent emotion and worse at understanding the connection between reminders and emotion. Children’s theory of mind and verbal ability were significant predictors of their ability to understand emotion.

Emotion understanding, theory of mind, and prosocial orientation: Relations over time in early childhood

Data were collected when children were 42, 54, and 72 months of age (Ns = 210, 191, and 172 for T1, T2, and T3, respectively). Children's emotion understanding (EU) and theory of mind (ToM) were examined as predictors of children's prosocial orientation within and across time. EU positively related to children's sympathy across 2.5 years, and T1 EU positively related to parent-reported prosocial orientation concurrently and across 1 year (T2). T2 ToM positively related to parents’ reports of sympathy and prosocial orientation concurrently and 18 months later (T3); in contrast, T3 ToM did not relate to sympathy or prosocial orientation. T2 ToM accounted for marginally significant variance (p < 0.058) in T3 mother-reported prosocial orientation over and above that accounted for by T2 prosocial orientation. Fostering the development of EU and ToM may contribute to children's prosocial orientation.

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children: Heterogeneity in the development of emotion understanding

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While both post-institutionalized groups scored lower than the never-institutionalized children, those from China performed better than those from Eastern Europe. Post-institutionalized children's performance was predicted by their age at adoption.