The development of emotional responses to music in young children

Children aged 3 to 4 and 7 to 8 years listened to eight tunes which were either in the major or minor mode and either unaccompanied melody or harmonized. For each tune children selected one of two schematic faces chosen to depict happy or sad facial expressions. Children 7 to 8 years old showed a significant major-happy and minor-sad connotation, which was also shown by adults. However 3 to 4 year-olds did not show any such significant association between musical mode and emotional response. Harmonic accompaniment significantly increased the frequency of happy responses. The results support the idea of a learned association between mode and emotional response. We thank the teachers and children of Mauldeth Road County Primary School and Ladybarn Primary School, Manchester, for their cooperation, and we thank Debra Raye and Daniela Milone for help with testing.     

How parents introduce new words to young children: The influence of development and developmental disorders

This study documents how parents weave new words into on-going interactions with children who are just beginning to speak. Dyads with typically developing toddlers and with young children with autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome (n = 56, 23, and 29) were observed using a Communication Play Protocol during which parents could use novel words to refer to novel objects. Parents readily introduced both labels and sound words even when their child did not respond expressively or produce the words. Results highlight both how parents act in ways that may facilitate their child's appreciation of the relation between a new word and its referent and how they subtly adjust their actions to suit their child's level of word learning and specific learning challenges.     

Maternal coping strategies and emotional distress: results of an early intervention program for low birth weight young children

Several questions were examined with Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) data (N = 843). Are effects of intervention services found for maternal emotional distress and coping strategies, and are these effects different for different groups of mothers? Do maternal distress, coping, and life events moderate (or mediate) the intervention effects reported earlier for children's test scores and behavior problems (IHDP, 1990)? The intervention reduced maternal distress, especially for women with less than a high school education. Maternal distress did not moderate or mediate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Maternal coping was not influenced by the intervention and did not moderate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Life events moderated the influence of the intervention on children's test scores; the intervention was more effective for children whose mothers had fewer life events.     

Socio‐emotional development: From infancy to young adulthood

Results from the Uppsala Longitudinal Study (ULS), which started in 1985, are reported in two sections. The first section gives a summary of longitudinal data from infancy to middle childhood (age 9 years; n = 96) concerning predictions of social functioning aspects from the theoretical perspectives of temperament, attachment, and health psychology (social factors). The second section presents the first results emanating from a follow‐up when participants were 21 years old (n = 85). The developmental roots of social anxiety symptoms were studied from the same perspectives as above, although with a special focus on the predictive power of the temperament trait of shyness/inhibition. Results for middle childhood outcomes showed that temperament characteristics were relevant for most outcomes, whereas the contribution of attachment was most convincingly shown in relation to social competence and personality. Social factors were found to have moderating functions, but direct effects were also shown, the most interesting perhaps being positive effects of non‐parental day care. Results from the 21‐year data confirmed the expected predictive relation from shyness/inhibition to symptoms of social anxiety and further showed this relation to be specific; the relation to symptoms of depression did not survive control for social anxiety, although the opposite was true. The broad analysis of predictor associations with social anxiety, showing the relevance of other temperament factors as well as interactive effects, again attested to the need for multi‐faceted models to analyze developmental trajectories.     

Jealousy and emotional responsiveness in young children with ASD

We investigated manifestations of jealousy in preschoolers (n=32) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and in a group of typically developing children (n=18) matched on mental age, verbal mental age, nonverbal mental age, and mother's education. Main results revealed explicit indices of jealousy in two thirds of the children with ASD compared with 94.5% in the typical group. In addition, different manifestations of this emotion emerged in the ASD group compared with the matched control group. Regarding mental and affective correlates of jealousy, expressions of jealousy correlated with IQ only for the children in the ASD group, and the ASD group revealed deficient emotional responsiveness (ER) capabilities. Significant correlations emerged between jealousy and ER in both the ASD and control groups. Discussion focuses on implications of these findings for understanding the core emotional deficit in autism.     

Pleasant emotional induction broadens the visual world of young children

These experiments aimed at studying the influence of emotional context on global/local visual processing in children. Children 5 years old, known to present an immature global visual bias, and 8 years old, known to pay attention predominantly to global information, were placed in either a neutral or pleasant emotional context and subsequently presented with a global/local visual judgement task. As with previous findings for adults, both age groups presented a pronounced perceptual bias toward global information following exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, younger children, who do not present a global bias during the neutral exposure, presented the same preference for global information as older children when exposed to the pleasant context. These findings indicate that emotion may strongly affect visual perception in children, with important implications for educational practice and models of cognition.     

Adults' emotional states and recognition of emotion in young children

This study addressed the degree to which adults' emotional states influence their perception of emotional states in children and their motivation to change such states. Happiness, sadness, anger, or a neutral state was induced in adults, who then viewed slides of 4-year-old children who were actually experiencing various emotional states. Adults' own emotional states had little impact on their accurate recognition of children's emotions or on their motives for social action to change such emotions. However, adults' states did influence the intensity they assigned to children's emotions, with happy adults tending to rate some emotions as more intense for black children (sadness) and for girls (anger and neutrality). The base rates with which adults used different emotion labels also influenced judgments, increasing it for the recognition of happiness and reducing it for anger. The results are discussed in terms of the factors that influence whether or not emotional states affect judgment processes and the role of emotion labels in the effective recognition of ongoing emotional states. Also addressed is the consequence of adults' recognition of emotion in children for the effective socialization of emotion.     

Vagal activity, early growth and emotional development

A review of the research on infant vagal tone suggests that vagal activity is associated with both infant growth and infant socioemotional development. Vagal activity has been noted to increase following the stimulation of pressure receptors as in massage therapy. Vagal activity, in turn, stimulates gastric motility which mediates weight gain in infants. Vagal activity has also been notably elevated during synchronous mother–infant interactions and positive affect, providing confirmatory data for the Porges “social engagement system” model. In contrast, low vagal activity has been noted in prenatally depressed mothers (and prenatally angry and anxious mothers) and their infants, as well as in children with autism. These studies highlight the relations between vagal activity and the social behaviors of attentiveness, facial expressions and vocalizations.     

Pleasant emotional induction broadens the visual world of young children

These experiments aimed at studying the influence of emotional context on global/local visual processing in children. Children 5 years old, known to present an immature global visual bias, and 8 years old, known to pay attention predominantly to global information, were placed in either a neutral or pleasant emotional context and subsequently presented with a global/local visual judgement task. As with previous findings for adults, both age groups presented a pronounced perceptual bias toward global information following exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, younger children, who do not present a global bias during the neutral exposure, presented the same preference for global information as older children when exposed to the pleasant context. These findings indicate that emotion may strongly affect visual perception in children, with important implications for educational practice and models of cognition.     

Number development in young children

This paper presents new data on children's acquisition of counting skills. Three aspects of counting were studied: the formation of the cardinality rule that the last number named during counting denotes the number of objects in an array, the mastery of the counting procedure or the coordination of ordered number names and objects counted, and the growth of the knowledge that x + 1 is greater than x. A model was outlined which posits the hierarchic integration of six number skills to account for the growth of the knowledge that x + 1 is greater than x and the development of number conservation. The six skills are: the cardinality rule, the counting procedure, acquisition of more x's, judgments of relative numerosity, pattern recognition of small numbers, and one-to-one correspondences.     

Play and emotional availability in young children with Down syndrome

This study investigates mother–child interaction and its associations with play in children with Down syndrome (DS). There is consensus that mother–child interaction during play represents an important determinant of typical children's play development. Concerning children with DS, few studies have investigated mother–child interaction in terms of the overall emotional quality of dyadic interaction and its effect on child play. A sample of 28 children with DS (M age = 3 years) took part in this study. In particular, we studied whether the presence of the mother in an interactional context affects the exploratory and symbolic play of children with DS and the interrelation between children's level of play and dyadic emotional availability. Children showed significantly more exploratory play during collaborative play with mothers than during solitary play. However, the maternal effect on child symbolic play was higher in children of highly sensitive mothers relative to children whose mothers showed lower sensitivity, the former displaying more symbolic play than the latter in collaborative play. Results offer some evidence that dyadic emotional availability and child play level are associated in children with DS, consistent with the hypothesis that dyadic interactions based on a healthy level of emotional involvement may lead to enhanced cognitive functioning.     

Early emotional development in infants and toddlers: Perspectives of Early Head Start staff and parents

As part of a curriculum‐development project, focus groups were implemented with Early Head Start staff and with parents of infants and toddlers enrolled in Early Head Start. Focus groups were designed to identify staff and parent beliefs about early emotional development. Three major themes were identified that crossed the staff and parent focus groups: (a) Infants' and toddlers' abilities to have emotions and to be aware of others' emotions; (b) roles of parents as advocates, teachers, and disciplinarians; and (c) parental reflectivity about their own experiences as influences on their parenting. The findings suggest that parents participating in Early Head Start have some knowledge about basic emotions and the developmental nature of emotions, but may easily misinterpret emotional displays only as attempts at manipulation rather than as valid expressions of feelings; expectations for gender‐appropriate emotional expressiveness begin early; more empowered parents may view themselves as role models and teachers for their children; and more reflective parents are better prepared to engage in the sensitive interactions needed to guide young children's growing awareness of their own and others' emotions. Implications for parenting education and program planning utilizing an infant mental health perspective are discussed.     

Bender-Gestalt emotional indicators and acting-out behavior in young children.

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between 15 emotional indicators on the Bender-Gestalt Test and acting-out behavior in young children. The subjects were 93 children ranging in age from five to 12 years. Each was administered the Bender. A measure of each subject's overt acting-out behavior was then obtained by having teachers rate each student on a Behavioral Rating Scale. Subjects' records were then divided into groups on the basis of both sex and age. Results indicated that neither the total number of Bender indicators nor any of the individual Bender indicators were correlated significantly with total scores on the rating scale. Use of the Bender as a projective device to measure acting-out behavior was seriously questioned.