Recognition of facial expressions of emotions by 3-year-olds

Very few large-scale studies have focused on emotional facial expression recognition (FER) in 3-year-olds, an age of rapid social and language development. We studied FER in 808 healthy 3-year-olds using verbal and nonverbal computerized tasks for four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, and fear). Three-year-olds showed differential performance on the verbal and nonverbal FER tasks, especially with respect to fear. That is to say, fear was one of the most accurately recognized facial expressions as matched nonverbally and the least accurately recognized facial expression as labeled verbally. Sex did not influence emotion-matching nor emotion-labeling performance after adjusting for basic matching or labeling ability. Three-year-olds made systematic errors in emotion-labeling. Namely, happy expressions were often confused with fearful expressions, whereas negative expressions were often confused with other negative expressions. Together, these findings suggest that 3-year-olds' FER skills strongly depend on task specifications. Importantly, fear was the most sensitive facial expression in this regard. Finally, in line with previous studies, we found that recognized emotion categories are initially broad, including emotions of the same valence, as reflected in the nonrandom errors of 3-year-olds.     

Influence of school-level variables on aggression and associated attitudes of middle school students

This study sought to understand school-level influences on aggressive behavior and related social cognitive variables. Participants were 5106 middle school students participating in a violence prevention project. Predictors were school-level norms opposing aggression and favoring nonviolence, interpersonal climate (positive student–teacher relationships and positive student–student relationships), and school responsiveness to violence (awareness and reporting of violence and school safety problems). Outcomes were individual-level physical aggression, beliefs supporting aggression, and self-efficacy for nonviolent responses. School norms and both interpersonal climate variables had effects on all three outcomes in theorized directions. Only one of the responsiveness measures, awareness and reporting of violence, had theoretically consistent effects on all outcomes. The other, school safety problems, affected self-efficacy later in middle school. Evidence of gender moderation was generally consistent with greater influence of school-level factors on female adolescents. Discussion focuses on implications in light of previous research and intervention possibilities.