Examined preschoolers' abilities to perceive others' feelings by identifying emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. A total of 53 preschoolers were asked to identify the puppet's emotions in puppet vignettes. Subjects often made personalized inferences to correctly indicate the puppet's feelings. (CB)

Two studies investigated children's responsiveness to an adult's negative emotions (anger, sadness, and pain). The studies also evaluated effects of adult scaffolding (labeling and explaining negative emotions, and requesting help). In the first study, subjects were 55 preschool children between the ages of 33 and 56 months. During individual play…

This study explored preschoolers' social cognition about their affect and behavior in difficult peer situations. Children completed the Challenging Situations Task (CST), a pictorial forced-choice measure developed to examine preschoolers' affective and behavioral responses to three problematic peer situations. Children also completed a task…

A study investigated the relationship among four possible mechanisms for children's socialization of emotion: (1) mothers are essentially modeling the expression of emotion; (2) mothers' emotions serve a coaching function; (3) the affective environment to which a child is exposed may impact general social-emotional competence; and (4) mothers'…

Age, specific emotion, and linguistic modality (verbal vs. non-verbal) were predicted to affect knowledge of emotion in young preschoolers (N = 45, mean age = 40.7 mos). Prosocial response to emotion and knowledge of emotion were also predicted to be related, given naturalistic observation and the use of contextually valid emotion knowledge…

The effects of age, response modality, and specific emotion on knowledge of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in 45 preschoolers of 26-54 months were examined by means of puppet presentations. Results emphasize the emerging but sizable understanding of emotion on the part of young preschoolers. (CB)