Children's understanding of embarrassment: Integrating mental time travel and mental state information

The current study investigated 4‐ to 8‐year‐olds’ (N = 81) understanding of embarrassment and their ability to integrate temporal and mental state information to predict and explain emotions. Participants heard stories describing characters commit trivial social transgressions, and then the next day, characters found themselves in the same situation that led to the previous transgression. For some story endings, participants were asked to predict and explain how the character felt, and for others, participants were told the character started to feel embarrassed and they were asked to explain why. Participants’ responses were coded and analysed using nonparametric statistical tests. Kruskal–Wallis analyses revealed significant developments occur between 6 and 8 years in children's understanding of embarrassment and their ability to explain individual's emotion as caused by anticipating the reoccurrence of a previous embarrassing event. Younger children demonstrated a basic knowledge of embarrassment but failed to demonstrate more advanced understanding of the emotion. Findings from the current study indicate children reach a more mature understanding of embarrassment and the implications of committing social transgressions between 7 and 8 years. Finally, the current study contributes to the literature on children's ability to infer mental states and temporally connect experiences.     

What enhances the development of emotion understanding in young children? A longitudinal study of interpersonal predictors

We studied potential determinants of the development of children's emotion understanding (EU) from age 4 to 6 in a Norwegian community sample (N = 974) using the Test of Emotion Comprehension. Interpersonal predictors included the accuracy of parental mentalization, parental emotional availability, and teacher‐reported child social skills. Intrapersonal child factors were child gender and verbal skills. Overall, children's EU increased significantly over time. After adjusting for child gender, age‐4 EU, and parental socio‐economic status, greater child verbal and social skills and greater parental mentalization each uniquely predicted growth in EU. Results are discussed in terms of theory and research on children's EU and parents' emotion socialization.     

Engineering a Twenty-First Century Reading Comprehension Assessment System Utilizing Scenario-Based Assessment Techniques

The construct of reading comprehension has changed significantly in the twenty-first century; however, some test designs have not evolved sufficiently to capture these changes. Specifically, the nature of literacy sources and skills required has changed (wrought primarily by widespread use of digital technologies). Modern theories of comprehension and discourse processes have been developed to accommodate these changes, and the learning sciences have followed suit. These influences have significant implications for how we think about the development of comprehension proficiency across grades. In this paper, we describe a theoretically driven, developmentally sensitive assessment system based on a scenario-based assessment paradigm, and present evidence for its feasibility and psychometric soundness.     

Children's conceptions of physical events: Explicit and tacit understanding of horizontal motion

The conceptual understanding that children display when predicting physical events has been shown to be inferior to the understanding they display when recognizing whether events proceed naturally. This has often been attributed to differences between the explicit engagement with conceptual knowledge required for prediction and the tacit engagement that suffices for recognition, and contrasting theories have been formulated to characterize the differences. Focusing on a theory that emphasizes omission at the explicit level of conceptual elements that are tacitly understood, the paper reports two studies that attempt clarification. The studies are concerned with 6‐ to 10‐year‐old children's understanding of, respectively, the direction (141 children) and speed (132 children) of motion in a horizontal direction. Using computer‐presented billiards scenarios, the children predicted how balls would move (prediction task) and judged whether or not simulated motion was correct (recognition task). Results indicate that the conceptions underpinning prediction are sometimes interpretable as partial versions of the conceptions underpinning recognition, as the omission hypothesis would imply. However, there are also qualitative differences, which suggest partial dissociation between explicit and tacit understanding. It is suggested that a theoretical perspective that acknowledges this dissociation would provide the optimal framework for future research.     

情绪主题绘本阅读对自闭症谱系障碍儿童情绪理解障碍的干预效果

本研究选取一名15岁的重度自闭症谱系障碍儿童为研究对象，采用眼动追踪技术考察其情绪主题绘本阅读的眼动特征，并制定情绪主题绘本阅读方案，对该儿童的情绪理解障碍进行干预。结果显示：（1）在干预前，这名儿童阅读情绪主题绘本时更加关注背景区域，而较少注意主角形象区域，在整体画面中最后关注甚至忽视主角表情这一重要信息。（2）通过情绪主题绘本阅读干预，这名儿童对主角表情的首次注视前时间减少，注意分配时间和注视次数显著增加；情绪理解能力也显著提高。     

Person‐centred positive emotions,object‐centred negative emotions: 2‐year‐olds generalize negative but not positive emotions across individuals

Prior work suggests that young children do not generalize others' preferences to new individuals. We hypothesized (following Vaish et al., 2008, Psychol. Bull., 134, 383–403) that this may only hold for positive emotions, which inform the child about the person's attitude towards the object but not about the positivity of the object itself. It may not hold for negative emotions, which additionally inform the child about the negativity of the object itself. Two‐year‐old children saw one individual (the emoter) emoting positively or negatively towards one and neutrally towards a second novel object. When a second individual then requested an object, children generalized the emoter's negative but not her positive emotion to the second individual. Children thus draw different inferences from others' positive versus negative emotions: Whereas they view others' positive emotions as person centred, they may view others' negative emotions as object centred and thus generalizable across people. The results are discussed with relation to the functions and implications of the negativity bias.     

Blind to Bias? Young Children Do Not Anticipate that Sunk Costs Lead to Irrational Choices

Young children anticipate that others act rationally in light of their beliefs and desires, and environmental constraints. However, little is known about whether children anticipate others’ irrational choices. We investigated young children's ability to predict that sunk costs can lead to irrational choices. Across four experiments, 5- to 6-year-olds (total N = 185) and adults (total N = 117) judged which of two identical objects an agent would keep, one obtained at a high cost or one obtained at a low cost. In Experiment 1, adults predicted that the agent would choose the high-cost object over the low-cost one, whereas children responded at chance. Experiment 2 replicated these findings in children, but also included another condition which showed they were sensitive to future costs. They predicted that an agent would be more likely to seek out a low-cost item than a high-cost item. Experiments 3 and 4 then found that children do not anticipate the sunk cost bias in first person scenarios, or in interpersonal sunk cost scenarios, where costs are sunk by others. Taken together, our findings suggest that young children may struggle to understand and predict irrational behavior. The findings also reveal an asymmetry between how they consider sunk costs and future costs in understanding actions. We propose that this asymmetry might arise because children do not consider sunk costs as wasted.