Preschoolers trust novel members of accurate speakers' groups and judge them favourably

By age 3, children track a speaker's record of past accuracy and use it as a cue to current reliability. Two experiments (N?=?95 children) explored whether preschoolers' judgements about, and trust in, the accuracy of a previously reliable informant extend to other members of the informant's group. In Experiment 1, both 3- and 4-year-olds consistently judged an animated character who was associated with a previously accurate speaker more likely to be correct than a character associated with a previously inaccurate speaker, despite possessing no information about these characters' individual records of reliability. They continued to show this preference one week later. Experiment 2 presented 4- and 5-year-olds with a related task using videos of human actors. Both showed preferences for members of previously accurate speakers' groups on a common measure of epistemic trust. This result suggests that by at least age 4, children's trust in speaker testimony spreads to members of a previously accurate speaker's group.     

“They Danced Around in My Head and I Learned Them”: Children's Developing Conceptions of Learning

Two studies examined how 3–6-year-olds understand the process of learning. In study 1 examined how children spontaneously talk about learning via a CHILDES language analysis. Talk about the learning process increased between the ages of 3–5. Talk specifically about learning in terms of desire decreased during this period. This suggests the possibility that desire is important to children's initial understanding of learning, and children develop an understanding that various mental states including desire, attention, and intention, play a role in the learning process. In Study 2, we presented 4- and 6-year-olds with a set of stories designed to test their understanding of the role of these mental states. In both their judgments about whether someone learns and their justifications of their responses, younger children relied more on the character's desires whereas older children were more likely to integrate desire, attention, and intention together. These data suggest that children's understanding of the process of learning is developing during the early elementary school years.     

The Recognition of Adults' and Children's Facial Expressions of Emotions

The purpose of this study was to compare the recognition performance of children who identified facial expressions of emotions using adults' and children's stimuli. The subjects were 60 children equally distributed in six subgroups as a function of sex and three age levels: 5, 7, and 9 years. They had to identify the emotion that was expressed in 48 stimuli (24 adults' and 24 children's expressions) illustrating six emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sadness. The task of the children consisted of selecting the facial stimulus that best matched a short story that clearly described an emotional situation. The results indicated that recognition performances were significantly affected by the age of the subjects: 5-year-olds were less accurate than 7- and 9-year-olds who did not differ among themselves. There were also differences in recognition levels between emotions. No effects related to the sex of the subjects and to the age of the facial stimuli were observed.     

Parents' emotion‐related beliefs and behaviours in relation to children's coping with the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks

To assess relationships between parental socialization of emotion and children's coping following an intensely emotional event, parents' beliefs and behaviours regarding emotion and children's coping strategies were investigated after a set of terrorist attacks. Parents (n=51) filled out the Parents' Beliefs about Negative Emotions questionnaire and were interviewed within two weeks of the attacks. Their elementary and middle school‐aged children were interviewed eight weeks later. First, parents' beliefs were related to two kinds of parental behaviours. Parents' beliefs about both the value of and the danger of children's emotions were positively related to their discussion with their children. Parents' belief about children's emotions as dangerous was also negatively related to parents' expressiveness with their children. Second, parents' beliefs were related to five kinds of coping strategies reported by their children. Parents' belief about children's emotions as valuable predicted children's problem‐solving, emotion‐oriented, and support‐seeking coping following the terrorist attacks. Parents' belief about children's emotions as dangerous predicted children's avoidance and distraction coping following the attacks. Parents' beliefs about the importance of children's emotions may foster a family atmosphere that facilitates children's coping with intensely emotional events. Results support differentiated, multi‐faceted analysis of the broader construct of parental beliefs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parent–child talk and children's understanding of beliefs and emotions

We examined the development of children's understanding of beliefs and emotions in relation to parental talk about the psychological world. We considered the relations between parent–child talk about the emotions of characters depicted in a picture book, false belief understanding and emotion understanding. Seventy-eight primarily Caucasian and middle-class parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children participated (half boys and half girls). The emotions talked about were relatively simple, but the complexity of the situation varied in terms of whether or not an understanding of beliefs was required to understand the emotion. Talk about the belief-dependent aspects of the emotions of picture book characters predicted children's false belief understanding, whereas talk about non-belief-dependent aspects of these emotions predicted children's emotion understanding. We argue that these data suggest that the development of children's understanding of beliefs and emotions is intertwined with learning to talk about the psychological world.     

Children's memory for a personally experienced event: Implications for testimony

This study was prompted by an interest in children's abilities to testify in legal settings. Based on the fundamental premise that children cannot provide accurate testimony about events that cannot be remembered, this investigation focused on 3- and 6-year-olds' memory of a salient, personally experienced event. The event selected was that of a visit to the doctor for a physical examination. Children at both ages remembered most of the features of the check-up at an immediate memory test, although the older children performed somewhat better than younger children. In addition, the performance of the 3-year-olds decreased over delay intervals of 1 and 3 weeks, whereas that of the 6-year-olds remained constant over this period. Moreover, at all assessment points the older children provided more information in response to open-ended general questions than did the younger children. Both groups of children were quite good at giving accurate responses to misleading questions, although the 3-year-olds performed below the level of 6-year-olds. The need for further controlled studies of children's memory capabilities is discussed.     

When the happy victimizer says sorry: Children's understanding of apology and emotion

Previous research suggests that children gradually understand the mitigating effects of apology on damage to a transgressor's reputation. However, little is known about young children's insights into the central emotional implications of apology. In two studies, children ages 4–9 heard stories about moral transgressions in which the wrongdoers either did or did not apologize. In Study 1, children in the no‐apology condition showed the classic pattern of ‘happy victimizer’ attributions by expecting the wrongdoer to feel good about gains won via transgression. By contrast, in the apology condition, children attributed negative feelings to the transgressor and improved feelings to the victim. In Study 2, these effects were found even when the explicit emotion marker ‘sorry’ was removed from the apology exchange. Thus, young children understand some important emotional functions of apology.     

My future self: Young children's ability to anticipate and explain future states

Two experiments examine preschool-aged children's ability to anticipate physiological states of the self. One hundred and eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with stories and pictorial scenes designed to evoke thought about future states such as thirst, cold, and hunger. They were asked to imagine themselves in these scenarios and to choose one item from a set of three that they would need. Only one of the items could be used to address the future state. In both experiments, developmental differences were obtained for correct item choices and types of verbal explanations. In Experiment 2, the performance of the 3- and 4-year-olds was negatively affected by introducing items that were semantically associated with the scenarios but did not address the future state, whereas the 5-year-olds’ performance was not. Results are discussed with respect to children's understanding of the future, theory of mind, and inhibitory control skills.     

Why preschoolers are reluctant to count spontaneously

Two experiments are reported which examine children's counting and its role in reasoning about the relative numerosity of two arrays. In the first experiment, children's number judgements were compared under different conditions designed to evaluate the importance of three different cues to number—length and density of rows, small number perception and counting. Children were found to count very rarely unless specifically asked to do so. Experiment 2 investigated some possible reasons why children who count readily in some situations are reluctant to count spontaneously in this number judgement task. Spontaneous counting in 4-year-olds increased in one condition only: when they were given feedback as to the correctness of their previous judgements. This feedback showed that basing judgements on number as counted was always correct whereas length and density judgements were only sometimes correct. Preschoolers' preference for length as a cue to number may therefore be due to their belief that length is a more reliable cue than counting, rather than to their ignorance about the link between counting and numerical reasoning.     

Developing Moral Emotion Attributions in Happy Victimizer Task: Role of Victim Information

Previous happy victimizer (HV) studies have shown that preschool and early elementary school children attribute happy emotions to the violator of moral rules. This study examines the effects of information pertaining to the victim in HV stories on children's emotion attributions. In Study 1, 55 children (aged 5–6 and 7–8 years) participated. Participants heard three types of stories: (a) victim sadness resulting from a character's wrongdoing (normal HV story); (b) victim happiness resulting from a character's wrongdoing (non‐canonical HV story); and (c) victim sadness resulting from an accident (accident story). The children were required to infer the victimizer's feelings and to justify their attributions. Children demonstrated more positive emotion attributions for non‐canonical HV stories than the normal and accident versions. In Study 2, 57 children (aged 5–6 and 7–8 years) judged two types of HV tasks (a story featuring a younger child as victim and a normal HV story). Both groups demonstrated more negative emotion attributions for the young victim stories than the normal HV stories, indicating that children's judgment varied according to contexts and different information in determining emotion attributions.     

Pre‐school children's understanding of the emotional consequences for failures to act prosocially

This study compares 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's assessment of the emotional consequences of failures to act prosocially with their assessment of the emotional consequences for prosocial and victimization situations. After listening to stories illustrating each of the socio‐moral situations, children rated the emotional consequences for an actor, recipient and observing teacher and justified their ratings. Findings show that pre‐school children's emotion ratings for failures to act prosocially differed from their emotion ratings for prosocial and victimization behaviours. Preschool children's ratings of an actor's emotions depended on the presence or absence of an observing teacher in prosocial and victimization situations, but not in failures to act prosocially. This study illustrates the complexity of young children's reasoning about failures to act prosocially and highlights the importance of contextual influences on children's understanding of socio‐moral emotions.     

Parents' Expressiveness and Young Children's Emotion Decoding With Parents and Unknown Adults

The authors investigated young children's ability to decode the emotions of happiness and anger expressed by their parent and an adult stranger. Parents and adult strangers (encoders) were videotaped while describing events that had elicited happiness or anger. Children viewed brief clips edited from these videotapes and indicated the emotion that their parent or the stranger was expressing. With male encoders, only children's age predicted accuracy. With female encoders, mothers' expressive style and children's age interacted to predict children's decoding accuracy. Compared with older children of less positively expressive mothers, older children of more positively expressive mothers were more accurate overall, because they were better at recognizing happiness. In general, children were no more or less accurate in decoding their parent's emotions than they were in decoding an unknown adult's emotions.     

Understanding the glue of narrative structure: Children's on- and off-line inferences about characters’ goals

Because characters’ goals play a key role in the structure of narratives, the ability to make inferences about goals is essential to narrative comprehension. Despite their importance, no previous studies have examined the process by which children make these goal inferences. In the current study, we examined 6- and 8-year-old children's goal inference making processes through think-aloud protocols. We also examined the product of comprehension, the mental representation of text, through free recall and comprehension questions. The results revealed that children of both ages regularly made appropriate goal inferences while listening to narratives. In addition, the number of goal inferences predicted children's recall of the stories. Thus, children as young as 6 years old are sensitive to the vital role of characters’ goals in narrative structure, and they can engage in sophisticated cognitive processing while they listen to narratives to form coherent mental representations of them.     

Finding the Cause: Verbal Framing Helps Children Extract Causal Evidence Embedded in a Complex Scene

In making causal inferences, children must both identify a causal problem and selectively attend to meaningful evidence. Four experiments demonstrate that verbally framing an event (“Which animals make Lion laugh?”) helps 4-year-olds extract evidence from a complex scene to make accurate causal inferences. Whereas framing was unnecessary when evidence was isolated, children required it to extract and reason about evidence embedded in a more complex scene. Subtler framing stating the causal problem, but not highlighting the relevant variables, was equally effective. Simply making the causal relationship more perceptually obvious did facilitate children's inferences, but not to the level of verbal framing. These results illustrate how children's causal reasoning relies on scaffolding from adults.     

Knowing How to Project Objects: Probing the Generality of Children's Action Knowledge

Previous work on the development of intuitive knowledge about trajectories has shown a dissociation between young children's aimed throwing actions, in which they are highly sensitive to the physical laws of motion, and their explicit judgments, in which they exhibit misconceptions. This research investigated the generality of children's action knowledge by having the participants project a ball with a sling. Instead of adjusting sling stretch, and hence sling force, correctly as a function of both the release height and the target distance, 5- and 6-year-olds (Experiment 1, N = 32) and, without flight feedback, even most 7- to 10-year-olds (Experiment 2, N = 96) considered distance only and ignored the height dimension. Similarly, children's judgments of the required sling stretch tended to follow a distance-only rule, especially with children younger than 9 years of age. These results show that young children's action knowledge exhibited in throwing does not generalize to arbitrary means of force production. They further suggest that there is no developmental trend toward such generalization in the age range examined.     

A new Method of Measuring Emotional Stability

Two age groups of children (6- and 10-year-olds) were told stories that could lead to a simultaneous experience of two different emotions. In half of these situations both of the impulses were negative; in the other half, one was positive and the other negative. The 6-year-olds were inclined to ignore one of the two emotion impulses, especially when the two emotions were of opposite kinds. Children's simultaneous experience of more than two emotions led to speculation about the origin of new emotions out of the blending of emotions. On the basis of a simple intensity index with every emotion, we could also investigate further the mutual intensity and influence of simultaneously occuring emotions.     

Predictors of Preschoolers' Self-Knowledge: Reference to Emotion and Mental States in Mother-Child Conversation about Past Events

Reference to emotion and mental states were expected to predict the organization of children's self-knowledge. Thirty-three 3.5- to 4.5-year-olds (17 females and 15 males) discussed 4 past events with their mothers. Conversations were coded for emotional content and reference to mental states. Children completed the Children's Self-View Questionnaire (CSVQ; Eder, 1990). Organization of self-knowledge was defined as the consistency with which children rated themselves as either high or low with respect to the dispositions indexed by the CSVQ. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that reference to emotion was a significant predictor of organization scores after controlling for linguistic skill, but that mental state reference was not. Mothers initiated talk about emotion more often than their children did. The results are consistent with theories of the early social construction of the self-concept and have implications for developing models of autobiographical memory.     

Fulfilment of intention and desire in children's judgements of emotion for sociomoral events

This study investigated whether children appreciate that enacting an intention can emotionally affect an agent separately from whether the agent's desire is fulfilled. Children ages 5–11 years and adults heard several vignettes about an agent who intended to take another child's toy in which the agent's intention was either enacted or blocked and desire was fulfilled or unfulfilled. The effect of intention on judgements of the agent's emotion varied according to desire fulfilment and age. Overall, participants judged that an agent who acted intentionally to fulfil a desire felt happier than an agent whose intention was blocked. When the agent's desire was unfulfilled, the effect of enacting an intention varied by age. Five‐ to 6‐year‐olds judged that acting intentionally could decrease the negative emotion associated with an unfulfilled desire. The findings show relatively early appreciation of intentionality in children's judgements of emotion. Happy victimizer attributions decreased between 5 and 8 years, but attributions of positive emotion to transgressors did not vary by intentionality. The relationships between intentionality, agency, and emotion are discussed.     

Young Children's Theory of Mind and Emotion

Abstract

In three experiments, children aged 3 to 7 years were tested for their understanding of the impact of beliefs and desires on emotion. Children watched while animal characters were offered various types of container and then predicted their emotional reaction. In Experiment 1, the children (but not the characters) knew that the desirable contents of each container had been removed. The majority of 6-year-olds and a minority of 4-year-olds understood that the characters would be happy with the gift, given their mistaken belief about its contents. In Experiment 2, characters were given containers apparently containing an object they wanted but really containing an object they did not want, or vice versa. Predictions of emotion based on both the desire and the mistaken belief of the characters increased with age. In Experiment 3, characters were given closed containers that might or might not contain an item they wanted. Both 3-and 5-year-olds grasped that the characters' emotional reaction would depend on both their (unconfirmed) beliefs and desires about its content.

The experiments show that preschool children deploy a theory-like conception of mind in predicting emotional reactions. They understand that the emotional impact of a situation depends not on its objective features but on the beliefs and desires that are brought to it.     

Children's Understanding of Second‐Order False Belief: Comparisons of Content and Method of Assessment

This research examined children's performance on second‐order false belief tasks as a function of the content area for the belief and the method of assessing understanding. A total of 70 kindergarten and first‐grade children responded to four second‐order stories. On two stories, the task was to judge a belief about a belief, and on two, the task was to judge a belief about an emotion. On one trial within each group, the task was to predict the target's belief, and on one trial, the task was to explain the belief. Older children outperformed younger children on the prediction measure. Differences as a function of content area and method of assessment were limited; when they did occur, performance was generally better with belief than with emotion as the target, and better with prediction than with explanation as the response criterion. Finally, there was no relation between number of siblings and performance.