Investigated contributions to individual differences in preschoolers' identification of basic emotional expressions and situations, emotion language, and self-generated causes for basic emotions. The contribution of socialization predictors to emotion understanding was moderated by gender only for negative emotional responsiveness, and children…

Seven and 12 year olds received feedback from another child while they played a game. The positive or negative nature of the feedback influenced children's emotional response to the feedback, their reports of their emotional response, and their understanding of their emotion. (BC)

Two experiments tested whether newborns could discriminate their own and another newborn's cry. Results indicated that awake newborns expressed facial distress more frequently and longer to another newborn's cry than to their own. Sucking decreased significantly between pretest phase and first minute of another infant's cry. Asleep infants'…

Investigated from a dynamic systems perspective mutual regulation during naturalistic interaction of mothers with their 4-month-olds. Found that mothers and infants communicated primarily through vocal signals and responses. Levels of contingent responsiveness between partners were significantly associated and occurred within distinct behavioral…

Analyzes the moral acts of 19 dyads of 4-year-olds in a cognitively simplified version of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game in relationship to their friendship, emotions, and processes of conflict resolution. (HOD)

Eighty-five children between 7 and 12 years of age were asked to discuss happy, sad, or affectively neutral incidents that had been experienced either by themselves or by another child. Each child received prize chips for participating in the study. Then the children were given the opportunity to share their experimental earnings with some less…

Used semiprojective and scenario-based measures to identify evidence for adaptive or maladaptive aspects of guilt and shame in 5- to 12-year olds. Found that shame and projective guilt were related to symptoms as rated by parents, self-blame, and attempts to minimize painful feelings. Scenario-based guilt was related to fewer symptoms in boys but…

Examined whether early individual differences in look duration were related to general mechanisms of the infant nervous system combining attention and emotion. Found significant positive correlations between attention measures and duration of facial expressions of pain/distress after vaccinations at 3, 5, and 11 months. Concluded that individual…

In this study, the linear and interactive relations of children's effortful control and parents' emotional expressivity to children's empathy-related responses were examined. Participants were 214 children, 4.5 to 8 years old. Children's effortful control was negatively related to their personal distress and was positively related to their…

The authors investigated relations between mother-infant dyadic coordination and infants' physiological responses. Mothers (N=73) and 3-month-old male and female infants were observed in the still-face paradigm, and mothers' and infants' affective states were coded at 1-s intervals. Synchrony and levels of matching between mother-infant affective…

Weekly observations documented developmental changes in mother-infant face-to-face communication between birth and 3 months. Developmental trajectories for each dyad of the duration of infant facial expressions showed a change from the dominance of Simple Attention (without other emotion expressions) to active and emotionally positive forms of…

This research investigated mothers' affect in the context of children's homework. Mothers (N=109) of children 8 to 12 years old were interviewed daily about their affect while interacting with children, their assistance with children's homework, and children's behavior while completing homework. At this time and 6 months later, children's…

Although conscience has been the focus of reflection for centuries, fundamental questions regarding its organization have not been fully answered. To address those questions, the authors applied structural equation modeling techniques to longitudinal data comprising multiple behavioral measures of children's conscience, obtained in parallel…

Attachment researchers claim that individual differences in how adults talk about their early memories reflect qualitatively distinct organizations of emotion regarding childhood experiences with caregivers. Testing this assumption, the present study examined the relationship between attachment dimensions and physiological, facial expressive, as…

To investigate affective and dispositional factors in the motivation of children's helping, 60 children ranging from preschool to sixth grade were observed in laboratory distress incidents. Results indicated that helping tended to be positively correlated with positive affect and negatively correlated with negative and neutral affect. (Author/RH)