Research with adults has increasingly moved beyond the focus on a small set of allegedly basic emotions, each associated with a signature facial expression. That expansion has been accompanied by a greater emphasis on the potential variability of emotion concepts across different cultural settings. In this conceptual review of children's…

Here we advance the proposal that in addition to the importance of emotion words, the dynamics of allostatic regulation play a central role in emotion concept development. We argue for a comprehensive extension of constructed emotion theory to emotional development. To do so, we emphasize possible mechanisms for emotion concept differentiation…

In this commentary on the special issue on emotional development, I focus on the papers by Holodynski and Seeger (2019) and by Hoemann, Xu, and Barrett (2019). I suggest that although understanding our emotions is an important part of emotional development; emotional development cannot be reduced to concept development, even when such concepts…

How can the use of metaphors promote sustainable resilience in an educational process? How can educators and pastoral workers facilitate transformative learning by promoting strategies for coping with challenges? The paper answers these questions from a religious and psychological perspective by applying a biographical approach. By evaluating the…

While children receive most emotional messages from their caregivers, schools provide a unique opportunity to promote social-emotional competence. Early childhood educators and administrators should consider the long-term outcomes of incorporating SEL for young learners and school staff. One strategy to promote young students' social-emotional…

Change is the sine qua non of emotion regulation (ER) and, thus, to understand ER we must analyze its temporal dynamics. Articles in the ER section of this special issue provide strong empirical evidence for the centrality of temporal dynamics in the development of ER on 3 levels: Rapid changes in spatial and temporal dynamics across multimodal…

The emotional intensities of gifted students affect not only their learning, but the way they live and see the world. This article examines the Theory of Positive Disintegration of Dabrowski (1964, 1972) to explore the inner world of the gifted. The five levels of development and five overexcitabilities of Dabrowski represent an abundance of…

Liminality, both etymologically and practically, is generally meant to be navigated through, not permanently occupied. The Disney "Descendants" series, marketed for ages seven to twelve, is an example of children's literature that engages with liminality as not only a lasting choice but also one of joy and reconciliation. The books…

Emotions form the foundation of infants' early social interactions and yet their role in prosocial behaviors is generally limited to situations of distress and other negative emotions. The present article argues that both positive emotions and the emotion of interest play important roles in prosocial behavior and development. First, we explore the…

In this article, we integrate two constructionist approaches--the theory of constructed emotion and rational constructivism--to introduce several novel hypotheses for understanding emotional development. We first discuss the hypothesis that emotion categories are abstract and conceptual, whose instances share a goal-based function in a particular…

I argue that emotion research needs formal (mathematical) theory to address two central questions. How does evolution shape mechanisms of emotion development across generations, depending on environmental conditions? How do these mechanisms generate emotions, based on lifetime experience and current context? Formal modeling enables researchers to…

In relation to the growing attention to the quality of physical space in early childhood education and care (ECEC), the present scoping review aims to define the state of the art regarding the relationship between the physical environment of ECEC services and the psychological development of children. After 50 years of research in this field, this…

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) called for an increased emphasis on models of psychological service delivery that are primarily indirect, adult-focused, and geared toward systems-level change in the schools. They asserted that research in school psychology should not focus on the problems of individual children and youth but address the…

Immordino-Yang and Gotlieb provide an elegant and helpful framework that integrates neuroscientific and education research on social affective development in their article, "Embodied Brains, Social Minds, Cultural Meaning: Integrating Neuroscientific and Educational Research on Social-Affective Development." Based on previous research,…

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has predominantly been conceptualised as a neurological process, which has precluded understanding of how social, cultural and material discourses inform the expression of emotional experiences. Gender remains a notable omission. This article explores the micro-practices through which gender structures the…