Recognition of uncertainty in emotional inferences: Reasoning about emotionally equivocal situations.

Three experiments investigated children's and adults' understanding of the uncertainty inherent in emotionally equivocal situations (i.e., situations that commonly elicit different feelings in different people). Students in 1st grade, 3rd grade, 6th grade, and college heard scenarios in which a peer experienced an emotionally equivocal or unequivocal event. Children, and to some degree adults, were overconfident about how individuals felt in equivocal situations. The tendency to acknowledge only 1 emotional possibility appeared to reflect difficulty in recognizing the plausibility of alternatives. Neither prompting children to give greater consideration to alternatives nor reminding them of the existence of individual differences produced greater discrimination between equivocal and unequivocal situations. In contrast, children recognized uncertainty when there was variability in the situation or within the individual. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's attributions regarding the situational determinants of emotion in self and others.

22 4–5 yr olds and 22 7–8 yr olds, equally divided by sex, were interviewed regarding the contexts they considered elicited each of 5 emotional states (happy, sad, angry, afraid, and surprised) in self, other children, and adults. Responses were coded into a priori categories and were compared with rankings made by 40 22–36 yr olds of the same categories as explanations for adults' and for children's emotions. Results confirm that explanations for emotional states were nonrandom, even for preschoolers, and were distributed in significantly different and meaningful ways across the emotions investigated. Several age- and gender-related hypotheses were confirmed: Interpersonal and achievement explanations for emotions both increased with age; fantasy contexts for fear decreased with age; and girls used more interpersonal explanations for emotion than did boys. Expected increases with age in cognitive differentiation of such affect knowledge were marginally confirmed, with older children using a greater number of categories to explain emotions than did younger children. Contrary to expectations, there were no age or gender effects as a function of target person, nor was there greater differentiation of categories used to explain own vs others' affect. Social and cognitive factors relevant to children's and adults' affect construals are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotion regulation: Self-report and physiological response to peer provocation.

The authors examined the notion that children's emotion regulation (ER) is a uniform skill by (a) investigating the concordance between self-report of ER and physiological measures and by (b) examining ER in a specific context (e.g., peer provocation) and context-free manner (e.g., during a semistructured interview of ER abilities). Seventy-two children in middle childhood (average age = 9 years) participated. Time-locked measures of heart rate reactivity and recovery were obtained in response to provoking comments, and vagal regulation was measured throughout the provocation session. Children who reported greater dysregulation showed increased heart rate reactivity to provocative comments (i.e., steeper heart rate slope) but no difference in heart rate recovery. The context-free but not the context-specific self-report measure was associated with a failure to suppress vagal tone. Implications for ER measurement and children's peer relations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of their emotionally disturbed peers: a replication

Despite increasing recognition of the early importance of peer relations, virtually no systematic information exists on the way in which normal children view their emotionally disturbed peers. This paper reports a replication of recent findings on children's use of the concept of emotional disturbance. Ss were 40 fourth and sixth graders. Five vignettes that described one normal and four emotionally disturbed boys were read to individual Ss; who were interviewed about their understanding of the central figures (CFs). Interviews were coded to a 5-point scale of degree of perceived emotional disturbance. Earlier findings were replicated to a remarkable degree. Ss differentiated among the CFs in a manner congruent with clinician judges' ratings. Grade differences indicate the differential attention to and valuing of specific behaviors, rather than global differences in perception of emotional disturbance.     

Children's use of mental state information in selecting persuasive arguments.

Whether and when children use information about others' mental states to invent or select persuasive strategies were examined. In Study 1, preschoolers, 3rd-graders, and 6th-graders (ns?=?11, 12, and 16, respectively; 17 girls) were told about story characters' persuading parents to buy pets or toys. Children were either given or not given information about story parents' beliefs and asked to invent or select appropriate arguments. Older children, but not preschoolers, used belief information to select arguments. Results were replicated in Study 2 (16 kindergartners, 16 3rd-graders; 19 girls). In Study 3, kindergartners and 1st-graders (N?=?16; 6 girls) reasoned well on false-belief tasks but not on persuasion tasks, suggesting that failure to consider mental states in persuasion was not due to lack of a belief concept. Findings suggest that mental state understanding may continue to develop after the preschool years; methodological qualifications are also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of frequency information for trait categorization and behavioral prediction.

Two experiments examined young children's use of behavioral frequency information to make behavioral predictions and global personality attributions. In Experiment 1, participants heard about an actor who behaved positively or negatively toward 1 or several recipients. Generally, children did not differentiate their judgments of the actor on the basis of the amount of information provided. In Experiment 2, the actor behaved positively or negatively toward a single recipient once or repeatedly. Participants were more likely to make appropriate predictions and attributions after exposure to multiple target behaviors and with increasing age. Overall, children's performance was influenced by age-related positivity and negativity biases. These findings indicate that frequency information is important for personality judgments but that its use is affected by contextual complexity and information-processing biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of recognition of emotions: Children's reliance on situational and facial expressive cues.

Examined the influence of nondiscrepance and discrepance between situational and expressive cues on children's emotion recognition. Videotaped episodes in which actors portrayed emotions were presented to 96 4–8 yr old girls. When cues were nondiscrepant, Ss were better at all ages in recognizing happiness, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust than shame and contempt. This was interpreted as reflecting differences in complexity of emotions. When cues were discrepant, Ss preferred cues depicting the most recognizable emotion—that is, cues of simple emotions in preference to cues of complex emotions, and emotional cues in preference to neutral cues. Contrary to expectations, Ss did not rely on more salient cues in preference to less salient cues. Ss' responses to questions regarding the perceived cues reflected a developmental trend from noticing only 1 type of cue to considering both situational and expressive cues. This is interpreted as reflecting a development from centration to decentration. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding extraverts' enjoyment of social situations: The importance of pleasantness.

Extraversion is a broad, multifaceted trait, yet researchers are still unsure of its defining characteristics. One possibility is that the essential feature of extraversion is the tendency to enjoy social situations. An alternative possibility is that extraversion represents sensitivity to rewards and the tendency to experience pleasant affect. In three studies, participants rated situations that varied on two dimensions: (a) whether they were social or nonsocial and (b) whether they were very pleasant, moderately pleasant, moderately unpleasant, or very unpleasant. Extraverts only rated social situations more positively than introverts did when the situations were pleasant, and extraverts also rated nonsocial situations more positively than introverts did if the situations were pleasant. Thus, the pleasantness of situations was more important than whether they were social or nonsocial in determining extraverts' and introverts' enjoyment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's consensual knowledge about the experiential determinants of emotion.

Gave 3 groups (kindergartners, 3rd graders, and 6th graders) of 32 Ss each vignettes describing experiences that were likely to produce emotional states, and determined their consensus about the probable affective reaction. A sample of 8 social and personal (private) experiences was used in the vignettes: success, failure, dishonesty (caught or not caught), experiencing nurturance or aggression, and experiencing justified or unjustified punishment. The potential affective reactions that Ss were asked to choose among included happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and neutral affect. There were no sex differences. Ss of all ages agreed that relatively simple experiences such as success and nurturance would elicit a happy reaction. For other categories of experience, multiple consensus appeared for more than one affective reaction. There were developmental differences in the affective reactions anticipated to 5 of the 8 experience categories. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive and social learning determinants of knowledge about the experiential antecedents of emotion for oneself and others. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectations and situational information as cocontributors to covariation assessment: A reply to Goddard and Allan.

Goddard and Allan (1988) suggest that the Alloy and Tabachnik (1984) covariation assessment model is too vague to make specific predictions concerning subjects' covariation assessments and, thus, that it is not useful in integrating the animal and human literature. In this reply, I address the general issue of the model's testability and predictive power and discuss specific examples of experimental findings that Goddard and Allan claim are inconsistent with the model. I show that two themes characterize their examples of "inconsistent" empirical findings and that both of these themes are based on an inadequate understanding of our framework. I also illustrate that their claims that we misinterpreted literature are unjustified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of dispositions to predict classmates' behavior.

Kindergartners, 3rd, and 6th graders chose classmates whom they would and would not like to have on their team for an academic contest and as playmates. Ss also rated their classmates on likableness and academic ability. At all ages, children's choices for the academic competition and the play situation were significantly associated with their ratings of their classmates' academic and social competence, respectively. Ss typically referred to academic abilities to explain their teammate choices for the academic contest and to social competence or friendship to explain playmate choices. Questions about the stability of classmates' academic and social competencies revealed that not until 6th grade did Ss indicate that there are limits in the degree to which academic and social competencies could improve with effort. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A theory of emotionally based drive (D) and its relation to performance in simple learning situations.

In a series of experiments at the University of Iowa concerning the role of aversive motivational factors in learning situations, degree of motivation was estimated in terms of "performance on a so-called scale of emotional responsiveness or manifest anxiety." These experiments have aroused considerable and also "not infrequent critical reactions." In part these criticisms "reflect a serious lack of understanding of the structure and purpose of the basic theoretical framework underlying the experiments… . One of the purposes of this paper is to provide a more systematic presentation of our basic theory." A diagram representing a portion of the theoretical schema relevant to data for classical conditioning and specifying classes of independent variables, intervening variables, and dependent variables is provided. "The theory takes its start from Hull's basic assumption that the excitatory potential, E, determining the strength of a response is a multiplicative function of a learning factor, H, and a generalized drive factor, D, i.e., E = H X D." On the basis of analogy with overt reflexes a number of properties that could be assigned to the hypothetical response mechanism proposed are indicated. Experimental evidence relating to the theory is presented and discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of sample size and diversity information within basic-level categories

Category-based induction involves making decisions about some member(s) of a category based on information concerning other category members. Recent studies indicate that although adults make use of information concerning sample size (larger samples are a stronger basis of inference than smaller samples) and sample diversity (more diverse samples are better than more homogeneous samples) when making category-based inductive judgments, children do not do so until age 8 or 9 and even then to only a limited degree. This research however, was conducted at the superordinate level of categorization, and it is unclear if general difficulty with this category level may have masked children's ability to use size and diversity, or if these results represent a more entrenched conceptual difficulty in using this information. We therefore conducted three studies that investigate both 8- and 9-year-olds' and adults' ability to use sample size and diversity within basic level categories. Our results indicate that children's difficulty with this information is independent of category level, and may be based on preferences for other strategies concerning category membership and perceptual similarity.     

Developmental differences in the use of an abstract reference frame to infer spatial relationships.

16 2nd and 3rd graders, 16 5th and 6th graders, and 16 undergraduates were exposed to a very large, unfamiliar neighborhood. Half the Ss at each age level were shown the perimeter and then interior of the environment (P-I), and the other half were shown the interior and then perimeter (I-P). Results of subsequent testing indicate that children recalled spatial locations more accurately in the P-I condition than they did in the I-P condition, whereas younger children performed with equivalent accuracy across conditions; adults were very accurate in both conditions. These results suggest that age 11 yrs may be a critical point in development at which children benefit from perimeter knowledge of a large environment. This beneficial aspect of perimeter knowledge coincides with the onset of formal operational thought and children's ability to code and coordinate an environment in relation to abstract axes or directions defining a grid as described by Piaget and Inhelder (1967). (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of triadic eye gaze information for "mind reading."

Five experiments examined children's use of eye gaze information for "mind-reading" purposes, specifically, for inferring another person's desire. When presented with static displays in the first 3 experiments, only by 4 years of age did children use another person's eye direction to infer desires, although younger children could identify the person's focus of attention. Further, 3-year-olds were capable of inferring desire from other nonverbal cues, such as pointing (Experiment 3). When eye gaze was presented dynamically with several other scaffolding cues (Experiment 4), 2- and 3-year-olds successfully used eye gaze for desire inference. Scaffolding cues were removed in Experiment 5, and 2- and 3-year-olds still performed above chance in using eye gaze. Results suggest that 2-year-olds are capable of using eye gaze alone to infer about another's desire. The authors propose that the acquisition of the ability to use attentional cues to infer another's mental state may involve both an association process and a differentiation process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's decoding of emotion in expressive body movement: The development of cue attunement.

Little research has focused on children's decoding of emotional meaning in expressive body movement; none has considered which movement cues children use to detect emotional meaning. The current study investigated the general ability to decode happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in dance forms of expressive body movement and the specific ability to detect differences in the intensity of anger and happiness when the relative amount of movement cue specifying each emotion was systematically varied. Four-year-olds (n?=?25), 5-year-olds (n?=?25), 8-year-olds (n?=?29), and adults (n?=?24) completed an emotion contrast task and 2 emotion intensity tasks. Decoding ability exceeding chance levels was demonstrated for sadness by 4-year-olds; for sadness, fear, and happiness by 5-year-olds; and for all emotions by 8-year-olds and adults. Children as young as 5 years were shown to rely on emotion-specific movement cues in their decoding of anger and happiness intensity. The theoretical significance of these effects across development is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for emotionally neutral information in posttraumatic stress disorder: A meta-analytic investigation.

Studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poorer memory for emotionally neutral information. The authors report a meta-analysis of 27 studies that investigated verbal and/or visual memory in samples with PTSD and healthy controls. The results indicated that the association between PTSD and memory impairment appears to be robust, small to moderate in size, and stronger for verbal than for visual memory. Effect sizes did not vary according to whether recall was immediate or delayed. The association is found in both civilian and military samples and cannot be readily explained as being due to the use of nontraumatized healthy control groups or concurrent head injury. The findings are placed in the context of recent neurobiological and experimental cognitive research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward an interactionist taxonomy of personality and situations: An integrative situational—dispositional representation of personality traits.

This article has 2 goals: first, to present and test a hierarchical representation of personality that jointly incorporates both situational and personality (e.g., Big Five) factors into a trait conception, and second, to explicate the dimensions along which situations differ in their effect on responses, providing the conceptual and empirical groundwork for the development of a joint taxonomy of traits and situations. A study of the effects of situational differences on trait self-reports indicated that conscientiousness and agreeableness can be represented hierarchically, with lower levels jointly constrained by both personality content and situational breadth. This representation establishes a methodological framework allowing for the explanation of the ways that situations interact with personality to affect responses. Implications of this representation for personality theory and prediction to and from personality inventories are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)