Child Recognition of Emotions

Child Recognition of EmotionsCHAPTER 1INTRODUCTIONHuman perceptions f ar as a means of expression, often indicating an individuals internal conscious live on or physiological arousal. Emotions also serve as a form of chat, alert individuals to chief(prenominal) aspects of their environment and their relationships with sepa prise individuals. Emotions influence a persons actions, cognitions, and how they atomic number 18 perceived by some others (Strayer, 2002). For deterrent example, sensations whitethorn influence how individuals respond to an environmental threat, as discoverings of sadness whitethorn indicate a withdrawal of behavior or tactile propertys of fear may engage the activity of flight (Strayer, 2002). The experience of perceptions, in turn, provides individuals with meaning about both(prenominal) their internal and external environments and information about how they should respond to a fond situation.The capacity to develop an adequate intelligence of emotions is kn induce as ablaze competence. to a greater extent precisely, excited competence is defined as a demonstration of self-efficacy in emotion-eliciting social transactions (Saarni, Campos, Camras Witherington, 2006, p. 250). For pincerren, ace way to gauge their excited competence is to visit their ability to perceive their own emotions and the emotions of others (Saarni et al., 2006). This type of assessment allows tecs to meet an approximate measure as to childrens ablaze development level.The first skill of emotional competence is for children to develop an understanding of self. Through an ability to be aware of their own personal emotional experience, children begin to develop self-conscious emotions. Feelings of shame, guilt, and embarrassment, for example, allow children to refer to themselves as having conscious sentiency that they are distinct from others (Lewis, 1993, 1995 Mascolo Fischer, 1995). In addition, childrens emotional competence is dev eloped through an ability to be aware of multiple emotions or to feel that their emotions are in conflict with their environment (e.g., ambivalence Stein, Trabasso, Liwag, 2000). As children become aware of their own emotions, emotional development is strengthened and refined.A second valuable skill development to emotional competence is for children to make sense of others inner republics (Saarni et al., 2006). Specifically, children ingest to comprehend and hand over others behaviors and begin to realize that others are capable of forming their own beliefs and emotions (for a review see Dunn, 2000 Halberstadt, Denham, and Duns much, 2001). Understanding the distinction between ones own emotions and the emotions of others is crucial to emotional development in children. For instance, studies indicate that childrens ability to accurately advert emotions in self and in others may work as a gauge to assess social competence (Halberstadt et al., 2001). In these types of studies, childrens social competence is launch by correlating their understanding of emotion terms, facial expressions, and elicitors of emotion terms (e.g., situational descriptions of a ingenious or sad event) with their social competence rating from teachers ratings or by peers sociometric choices (Saarni et al., 2006). Childrens ability to spot discrepancys in emotional features in combination with how others view their ability provides a measure of their social competence. Monitoring childrens social competence allows one to identify socially disadvantaged children and implement effective coping strategies before any harmful, long-term effects manifest (Benford, 1998).Through childrens awareness of their own emotional state, in combination with the skill to discern others emotions, children begin to achieve more effective emotional processing skills. Understanding childrens emotional processing is important because it chance ons legion(predicate) social outcomes, such as children s helping behavior (Chapman, Zahn-Waxler, Cooperman Iannotti, 1987, Miller Jansen op de Haar, 1997), aggressive responses (Harris Siebel, 1975), and self-control (Ceschi Scherer, 2003). Few studies, however, have experienced how emotion concerns childrens abilities to accurately identify the emotional state of others.Consequently, the present study sought to examine the effects of childrens own emotional states on their social/cognitive abilities to discern emotional states in others. More specifically, this research sought to understand how corroboratory, disconfirming, and neutral emotional states of children mended performance on emotion mention tasks that utilized incompatible levels of cognitive analyzableity. By utilizing two types of emotion knowledge tasks, the research examined the influence of differently valenced emotions on childrens social-cognitive abilities. Results may help to expand existing social information processing precedents by incorporating th e influence cognitive complexity and affect may serve in childrens recognition of others emotions.CHAPTER 2LITERATURE REVIEWUnderstanding Others Emotions through Facial ExpressionsThe ability for children to understand what others are experiencing emotionally develops through an interaction between the awareness of their own emotional experience and the ability to empathize and conceptualize the causes of emotions in others (Saarni et al., 2006). In addition, the more children learn about how and why others act the way they do, the more they earth-closet make descendences about the emotional state of others. Children typically rely on facial expressions to infer others emotional state (Ceschi Scherer, 2003 H erstwhile(a) Kirkpatrick, 1991).The face is considered the primary indicator of human emotion (Ekman, 1992). For example, body gestures are easily concealed (e.g., hiding a clinch fist behind ones back) or verbal communication can be eliminated by simply refusing to speak. Facial expressions, however, are more difficult to disguise (Ekman, 1993). Additionally, the miscellany in an individuals face allows for a variety of emotional expressions, each associated with a distinct facial expression (Ekman, 1993). Facial expressions serve a dual part facial emotions can indicate a persons internal emotional state or function as symbols referring to something else, such as a form of communication (e.g., deterring or placating someones actions Lewis Michalson, 1985).Facial expressions are commonly used as a means for gauging emotion states in research. By 2 years, children can distinguish a number of basic emotional states in the facial expressions of adults, but do not always label them accurately (Izard, 1971). At 5 years, children can accurately label 41% of the emotions depicted in a set of adult photographs (Odom Lemond, 1972). Overall, young children can recognize some of the more common emotional expressions as displayed by adults (e.g., MacDonald, Kirkpatrick Sullivan, 1996).By the ages of 11 or 12, most children recognize and verbalize that a persons expression may be both a social and an emotional response (e.g., Underwood Hurley, 1999). Consequently, children realize that a persons facial expression may indicate both the individuals internal state (e.g., I am feeling sad), as well as what the cues represent socially (e.g., I am expressing my feelings of sadness towards others). Each form of emotional expression is essential in align for children to interpret and comprehend anothers emotion (Underwood Hurley, 1999).Developmental Differences in Childrens Understanding of Others wound up ExperiencesAs children mature, they acquire greater abilities to make inferences about what others are feeling (Gross Ballif, 1991). Children, in an attempt to understand the emotions of others, begin to combine facial and situational cues. The ability to combine these cues, however, is strengthened and refined as children age. The eas iest emotions for children to discern are positive ones (Saarni et al., 2006). Children can more readily identify happy reactions in a naturally occurring setting as compared to nix reactions (e.g. Fabes, Eisenberg, Nyman, Michealieu, 1991). ban facial expressions, on the other hand, such as sadness, fear, and anger, are more difficult for children to decode. Negative emotions become easier to interpret, however, when they are paired with an emotion-eliciting situational context (Saarni et al. 2006). In addition, the causes of negative emotion are easier for children to decode than causes of positive emotion, an interpretation that appears lucid with negative emotions eliciting a more intense response (Fabes et al., 1991). For example, children can easily determine the causes for their goal failures because it is an undesired consequence.Developmental differences are apparent when evaluating childrens understanding of the causes of emotions (Fabes et al., 1991). Younger childre n (i.e., 3 year-olds) are more prone to attribute causes of emotion to a persons wants or enquires, whereas older children (i.e., 5 year-olds) make use of others personality traits to determine their future reactions to an emotional event (Fabes et al., 1991). Children aged 5 to 10 years can use a characters past experience to determine the characters reactions to a new-fangled situation (Gnepp Gould, 1985). For example, if a characters beaver friend harasses him, children aged 5 to 10 can infer how that character will later react to seeing the best friend on the playground. The developmental difference is evident in the quality of the response. Younger children are more likely to infer what the character is feeling wholly through the current situational information (e.g., the character would be pleased to see the best friend), whereas older children are more likely to use the prior experience to evaluate how the character will react (e.g., the character will avoid the best fri end on the playground Gnepp Gould, 1985). Further support for this developmental difference is that younger children (i.e., preschoolers) are more likely to infer the emotional state of others when a characters emotional cues are presented explicitly (e.g., pictorial representation of the characters face) as compared to older children (i.e. school-aged) who can adeptly determine the characters response when less(prenominal) explicit cues are utilized (Lagattuta, Wellman, Flavell, 1997).These investigations demonstrate that by school age, children are well equipped to identify emotional expressions in others. Although there are developmental differences in childrens abilities to identify reasons for the emotional expression, by the age of 5, children generally distinguish differences in emotional cues and identify different types of emotional expressions in others.Integrating Cognition and EmotionThere has been considerable interest in how children interpret, encode, and respond to social environments. One such model that attempts to explain the relationship is the social information processing model (kink Dodge, 1994). The social information processing model assumes that the way in which children understand and interpret social situations at one time influences how they respond behaviorally (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000). In turn, the social information processing model offers an explanation for how children process and interpret cues in a social situation and arrive at a decision that facilitates their understanding of the social environment (Crick Dodge, 1994 Dodge, 1986). For any social interaction, children utilize their past experiences and biologically determined capabilities (e.g., memory store capacity) in line of battle to rapidly assess the situation (Crick Dodge, 1994).To illustrate the social information processing model, imagine a child who gets pushed on the playground by another child. First, the child must encode the social cues (both intern al and external) to determine what happened (attention, encoding) and then determine why it happened (interpretation an accident or on purpose?). In the third stride of the model, the child begins to clarify his or her goal in the social situation (e.g., goal to try out others he/she wont tolerate the behavior). In step quadruplet and five of the model, possible responses to the situation are generated in terms of anticipated outcomes and how those actions relate to the individuals goals (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000). The child may choose to retaliate in response to the other childs actions or the child may choose to not retaliate for fear of the situation escalating. Finally, the majority of children generally choose the most positively evaluated response with look on to goals and anticipated outcomes before the behavior is enacted (e.g., the child ignores the push and walks away Crick Dodge, 1994).The social information processing model has been useful in assessing how children e ncode and interpret social situations. The model, however, does not specify how emotion affects the processing strategy (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000). Lemerise and Arsenio (2000) argue that it is possible to expand Crick and Dodges models explanatory power by integrating emotion processing with social information processing.Before integrating emotion and social information processing, it is important to understand the relationship between the two. Emotions and cognitions may appear kindred because both are types of information processing, but the way each influence human behavior makes them distinct (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000). Emotion is about motivation cognition, on the other hand, concerns knowledge. This view is shared by many functionalist theorists, neurophysiologists, and some cognitive theorists (e.g., Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, Campos, 1994 Damasio, 1994 Oatley Jenkins, 1996).Because cognition and emotion are two distinct processes, an attempt to devise a model that integrates and utilizes the two is pragmatic. In Lemerise and Arsenios (2000) social information processing model, the researchers added and expanded to Crick and Dodges (1994) original concept. In particular, the researchers implemented other emotion processes that could influence accessing and evaluating responses. As an example of this approach, intense emotions can interfere with the steps of Crick and Dodges model where children assess possible responses to a situation (Steps 4 and 5). For example, children with intense emotions may react negatively to a social situation (e.g., becoming easily upset and running away), thereby reducing the probability that they will interpret and encode the situation from the placement of all parties (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000). Intense emotions, in turn, can influence how a child responds in a social situation. In addition, the childs reaction to the social situation may be dependant on whether he/she cares about and wants that person to like him/her (Leme rise Arsenio, 2000). Emotions heavily influence this social decision making process.It is difficult to adhere to a social informational processing strategy without accounting for the influences emotion may serve. Support for the role emotions play in social information processing has been demonstrated in more recent research (e.g., Orobio de Castro, Merk, Koops, Veerman, Bosch, 2005). Specifically, researchers examined the relationship between emotional aspects of social information processing and aggressive boys. by and by hearing a series of vignettes that instilled exacerbation by their peers, participants answered questions concerning social information processing, including feeling of their own emotions, the emotions of others, and emotion regulation. Aggressive boys used less adaptational emotion-regulation strategies, attributed more hostile intent to others actions, and reported less guilt concerning their own actions (Orobio de Castro et al., 2005). For aggressive boys , anger attribution (i.e., encoding of emotions) significantly influenced the interpretation step of the social information processing model, a view that is consistent with Lemerise and Arsenios (2000) model. Clearly, emotions can influence childrens social information processing strategies. By combining emotional processing with social decision making processes, researchers can expand Crick Dodges models explanatory power, perhaps offering go on insight into the influence emotion serves for childrens cognitive abilities (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000).Induction of Positive and Negative AffectResearchers examine emotional influences on social information processing and other social behaviors by essayally inducing emotions and assessing the effects (Bryan, Mathur Sullivan, 1996 Bugental Moore, 1979 Burkitt Barnett, 2006 Carlson, Felleman master, 1983 Masters, Barden Ford, 1979 Stegge, Terwogt Koops, 2001). Inducing affect typically consists of an experimenter having subjects recal l events that make them happy or sad before examining their responses to a variety of social and cognitive lines. These problems can range from measures of altruism, self-gratification, or delay of gratification (Bugental Moore, 1979). For this type of induction mathematical operation, the researcher asks the child to recall and reflect upon a happy or sad past event for approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes (Bryan et al., 1996). This type of procedure allows psychologists to examine how affective states influence individuals social and psychological behaviors (Bugental Moore, 1979).Pre-recorded videotapes or phonecassettes are another technique used to implement positive or negative affect in children (e.g., Carlson Masters, 1986 Rader Hughes, 2005). The recordings improve the reliability and standardization of the affect inductions. The recording typically follows the same adjective method as the other affect induction studies (e.g., Carlson et al., 1983 Masters et al., 197 9 Moore, Underwood, Rosenhan, 1973)the person reading the script (e.g., actor, puppet) asks the child to ruminate on a past experience that is positive, negative, or neutral for approximately 30 seconds.For any procedural method chosen, it is important to validate if the affect induction actually takes place. There are multiple methods for conducting manipulation checks. Procedures include having two or more experimenters rate the childs mood and assessing interrater agreement (e.g., Carlson Maters, 1986) having participants use a word item check-list to indicate their current mood (e.g., Vosburg, 1998) or comparing if the performance of children in the positive or negative condition differs from those in the neutral condition (e.g., Bugental Moore, 1979 Stegge et al., 2001). As demonstrated in past research, the induction of positive and negative moods is experimentally possible.Positive and Negative Affect and Emotional ProcessingThere are a number of experimental studies that demonstrate the influence of childrens emotional states on a variety of emotional processes and behaviors, such as altruism (Chapman et al., 1987, Miller Jansen op de Haar, 1997), aggression (Harris Siebel, 1975), and self-control (Ceschi Scherer, 2003).One study, in particular, induced positive emotional states in a group of 5-6-year-old children to examine their responses to social comparison situations where the participant was rewarded unfairly, sometimes in the participants favor, sometimes in anothers favor (Carlson Masters, 1986). Children were exposed to one of trio emotion inducing conditions self- cerebrateed happy, other-focused happy, or neutral. After the children focused on their own happy emotional experience (self-focused) or the emotional state of a friend (other-focused) or had no emotional focus (neutral), they and other players received a reward for participating in a game. Children received either more (positive inequality) or less (negative inequality) of an award as compared to the other players. Children in the self-focused happy condition did not demonstrate a reduction in generosity after receiving an inequality of rewards (Carlson Masters, 1986). The authors interpreted their results as supportive of the lay out that positive mood facilitates tolerance of aversive experiences (Carlson Masters, 1986).What these studies did not answer, however, is what influence emotion serves in other social information processes. Specifically, how do inductions of positive or negative affect influence childrens emotion recognition?One research experiment did attempt to investigate the influence childrens own emotional states has on their ability to recognize emotions in others (Carlson et al., 1983). Experimenters induced emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, or neutral affect in eighty 4 and 5 year-old children. The children were then provided with a label of an emotion (e.g. happy) and asked to identify the correct facial expression from a group of photographs of other children who were displaying various emotions. Significant differences in trueness across the mood induction conditions were not found, but childrens own feelings of sadness did influence their perception of sadness in peers (Carlson et al., 1983). Sad participants were not more inaccurate than happy participants when identifying emotions, but when they were inaccurate they tended to overcloud sadness with anger.The induction of positive and negative mood in children appears to have an influence on childrens emotional processing. Negative affective states appear to lead to inaccuracies in the perception of others sadness, whereas positive affective states appear to help children maintain positive emotional experiences, even in the presence of aversive social situations.Influence of Emotional States on Cognition for AdultsDespite the number of studies assessing childrens emotion processing ability, only a few studies have investigated how emotion -directed information processes, such as perception, attention, judgment, and memory recognition and recall, are influenced by the childs own emotional state, whether enduring or temporary (Greene Noice, 1988 Masters et al., 1979 Rader Hughes, 2005). Because of this dearth in the literature, it is useful to review studies conducted with adults. One particularly important study, which examined the role affect plays in adults cognitive performance, induced positive and negative affect through the use of a role-playing technique while participants carried out three cognitive tasks (Izard, Wehmer, Livsey, Jennings, 1965). The cognitive tasks ranged from participants generating as many possible uses for a particular object (multiple-use task), recalling sets of numbers (digit span test), and giving verbalized responses for creative thinking problems. Positive affect increased performance for both the multiple-use task and the creativeness problems as compared to those in the negative affect condition.Some literature supports the finding that positive affect results in higher productivity and creativity (Ashby, Isen, Turken, 1999). Specifically, induced positive affect improved cognitive processes such as memory, judgment, risk-preference, decision-making, creative problem lick, categorization, and logical problem solving (Ashby et al., 1999). Other research, however, does not support the claim that positive affect improves cognitive productivity and creativity. Positive affect may actually interfere with performance on some tasks (e.g., Kaufmann Vosburg, 1997).In an attempt to explain the discrepancy in these results, Forgas (2000, 2002) affect infusion model (AIM) suggests that affect results in inattentive processing for complex tasks. As participants experience positive affective, for example, substantive processing or systematic processing may be hindered, thereby interfering with their ability to solve elaborate and complex problems. Specifically, negat ive moods may facilitate differentiated, analytic processing whereas positive moods may facilitate global, synthetic processing (Forgas, 2000). Negative moods may be more adaptive for cognitive tasks that require one to reduce complex decisions to a series of one-on-one comparisons, thus simplifying the results (i.e., analytic processing). Positive moods, on the other hand, may be more adaptive for cognitive tasks that require one to generate a wide variety of responses, often seeking out all possibilities for a solution (i.e., global processing).Following Forgas (2000, 2002) AIM model, it is clear how research supports the notion that positive and negative affect are adaptive for different types of cognitive tasks. To clarify, some studies show that positive affect facilitates cognitive performance by increasing participants creativity (Ashby et al., 1999 Isen, Daubman Nowicki, 1987 Isen, 2002 Izard et al., 1965). Other research, however, shows that positive affect results in ina ttentive processing, thereby reducing participants creativity and problem-solving (Forgas, 2000 Kaufmann Vosburg, 1997). These seemingly contrasting findings are explained by differences in task specificity. In the research conducted by Kaufmann and Vosburg (1997), for example, positive affect significantly inhibited creative problem solving. After the researchers experimentally induced affect, participants responded to a series of tasks presented in a paper-and-pencil format, and received no outside feedback. Contrastingly, in research conducted by Isen et al. (1987), they used creativity measures such as the candle-problem, which required participants to physically manipulate objects and to come up with as many solutions to the problem as possible. In addition, the participants received feedback, which allowed them to instigate further solutions to the problem. Clearly, the tasks used in each of these studies are distinct. The notion that positive and negative affect are adaptive to different types of cognitive tasks is important because it points out the need to carefully consider the type of cognitive task being performed. Positive or negative moods may facilitate processing for different types of tasks in adults because it is useful to examine how positive or negative moods affect childrens processing in different types of tasks.Influence of Emotional States on Cognition for ChildrenThere are indications that the influences of positive affect on childrens cognitive performance are similar to those in adults (Rader Hughes, 2005). For example, eighth-grade students who were experimentally induced with positive affect showed greater cognitive tractableness than students in the control condition and obtained higher scores on a verbal fluency test (Greene Noice, 1988). Likewise, researchers have examined the effects of emotional states on acquirement (Masters et al., 1979). After the induction of a positive, negative, or neutral emotional state, children completed a series of shape discrimination tasks. The dependent variable in the experiment was how many trials it took the children to achieve perfect mastery for the task (e.g. identifying 12 consecutive trials of shapes correctly). For children in the positive affect condition, positive affect enhanced performance. Contrastingly, for children in the negative condition, negative affect hindered performance dramatically (Masters et al., 1979). In addition, positive affect increased performance for children on a block design task, a contend cognitive task that requires the use of spatial analysis (Rader Hughes, 2005).Research also suggests a relationship between affect and childrens thinking processes (Bryan et al., 1996). Specifically, negative affective states step-down participants efforts for processing cognitive information (Ellis, Thomas, Rodriquez, 1984). Positive affective states, on the other hand, improve participants memory on various tasks, which include mastery of a invidious task (Masters et al., 1979) altruism (Chapman et al., 1987 Miller Jansen op de Haar, 1997) and child compliance (Lay, Waters Park, 1989). In sum, positive affective states increase complex cognitive functions when participants are required to combine information in new and useful ways (e.g., word association and memory tasks, creativity tasks, problem-solving tasks Bryan et al., 1996).Social Information Processing and Cognitive ComplexityChildrens awareness of their own emotional state, in combination with their skill to discern others emotions, allows them to develop more effective social information processing skills. As children become more aware of emotions they or others are experiencing, it facilitates problem-solving (Saarni et al., 2006). In turn, when children know how to respond emotionally to an encounter, it can aid in their decision making strategy, thus influencing behavioral or cognitive processing strategies.Task complexity can negatively influence acc uracy in identifying emotional expressions in others (MacDonald et al., 1996). Specifically, research has shown how incorporating contextual information for an emotion recognition task results in lower levels of performance as compared to a task where children are given the label for the emotional expression (MacDonald et al., 1996). Labeling tasks involve an super easy stimulus (i.e. children are given a word), whereas contextual information tasks involve integrating and synthesizing implicit information (i.e. children must derive a word from the vignette)plexity. paragraph should be eliminated. This is more relevant to cognitive processing strategies rather than levels of task. Adding contextual information to an emotion recognition task, therefore, increases the difficulty of the task, resulting in lower performance, specially for younger children (MacDonald et al. 1996).Past research on childrens emotional recognition has not adequately addressed the influence of childrens own emotional states (positive or negative) on the accuracy of the perception of emotional states in others. Research addressing the topic is minimal only a few studies have approached the issue (e.g., Carlson et al., 1983). In addition, past research has not directly demonstrated how emotion and cognitive task complexity influence childrens ability to recognize emotion in others.Based on the information regarding childrens ability to recognize emotions in others through their facial expressions the developmental differences in childrens facial recognition abilities the influence of emotion on childrens emotion processing and the influence of emotion on adults cognitive processing, researchers can devise an appropriate social information processing model. The model, in effect, should integrate emotion and cognitive processes to determine the influence affect and task complexity have on childrens recognition of emotions in others.The component of the model the present study investigated is how childrens own emotion affects their interpretation of social cues, specifically the emotional expression of others. Inaccurate interpretations will provide potential consequences to childrens subsequent social decision making processes.The Present StudyThe study examined the influence positive and negative affect has on childrens emotion recognition. Children, aged 5-to 8-years, participated because of their ability to identify emotions in others (Fabes et al., 1991, Gnepp Gould, 1985, Saarni et al., 2006). Because emotion processing and cognition are considered an integral part of childrens social competence (Lemerise Arsenio, 2000), the study design combined and evaluated cognition and emotional processes. Specifically, the study investigated how the cognitive complexity of the task interacted with mood effects on emotion recognition performance.In the experiment, children were individually tested. They were first exposed to one of three mood induction conditions (positi ve, negative, or neutral) using a computer setup with a pre-recorded audio file, a method that is consistent with a brief mood induction procedure (Rader Hughes, 2005). For the testing procedure, the experimenter utilized two forms of emotion expressing questions label-b