Adults recognize emotions conveyed by bodies with comparable accuracy to facial emotions. However, no prior study has explored infants' perception of body emotions. In Experiment 1, 6.5-month-olds (n = 32) preferred happy over neutral actions of actors with covered faces in upright but not inverted silent videos. In Experiment 2, infants…

A two-part study examined children's conceptions of the linkages between sociomoral events and emotional consequences for several event participants. Results of the first study indicated that children's conceptions were highly differentiated. The second study found children able to match affective information to events likely to cause emotional…

Examined expressions of negative emotion among 37 toddlers and strategies used to reduce or change these expressions. Six strategies were identified and evaluated. Findings suggest that active engagement was most commonly used and most negatively associated with child distress. Use of strategies varied by context. (HTH)

A preferential looking procedure was used to investigate 7-month-olds' perception of positive and negative affective facial expressions in which a single vocal expression was concordant or discordant with the videotaped facial expression. Results indicated that 7-month-olds discriminated among happy, interested, angry, and sad expressions.…

Examined relationship of emotion regulation and emotionality to social functioning in 77 children followed from age 4 to age 10. Found that high-quality social functioning was predicted by high emotion regulation and low nonconstructive coping, negative emotionality, and emotional intensity. Measures of regulation and emotionality frequently…

Examined relationship of regulatory control to preschoolers' peer interactions. Found that children high in effortful control were relatively unlikely to experience high levels of negative emotional arousal in response to peer interactions, but this relationship held only for moderate to high intense interactions. Socially competent responding was…

Examined whether putative regulatory behaviors widely assumed to be conceptually associated with certain behavioral strategies were associated with the changes in fearful and angry distress in 6-, 12-, and 18-month-olds. The key finding was that the use of some putative regulatory behaviors (distraction and approach) reduced the observable…

Examined 8- to 10-month-olds' responses to standard procedures eliciting joy, fear, anger, and discomfort. Found that response parameters to standard procedures cohered strongly within each episode. Responses cohered across same-emotion episodes, except for anger. Responses and father-reported temperament related to infant's emotional tone in…

Examined relations between maternal control and evaluative feedback during the second year of life and children's mastery motivation and expressions of self-evaluative affect a year later. Found that negative maternal evaluations at 2 years related to children's later shame, especially when linked to children's actions or products. Positive…

Using the Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure, a study examined the interrelations between dimensions of emotion and social interactive behaviors to explore the regulatory role of each in mother-infant interaction and how these roles may change in the second year. (HOD)

Examined children's emotional and behavioral regulation and emotional and prosocial responses to a crying infant. Found that children who could regulate their arousal were unlikely to become distressed and more likely than other children to talk to and comfort the crying infant. Girls were more responsive and engaged in more active responses than…

Seventy-two children were presented with a series of stories involving psychological harm in a game context. Found that older children were more likely than younger ones to base their evaluations on intentions, or both intentions and consequences, and to take into account the recipient's perspective. Game context interacted differentially with…

Examines young children's developing ability to talk about emotions, considers evidence concerning the ability to talk about emotions in the conduct of interpersonal interaction, and offers ideas about future directions for research, emphasizing the functionalist approach to the analysis of emotion-denoting terms. (HOD)

Investigated children's and adolescents' involvement in mutual antipathies. Found that children and boys of all ages were more frequently involved in same-sex antipathies; involvement in mixed-sex antipathies was comparable for both genders. Same-sex antipathies were associated with antisocial behavior and social withdrawal for both age and gender…

Examined empathy and conservation abilities of nonretarded children with autism and compared their performance to that of normally developing children. Autistic children performed surprising well, but not as well as normal children. There was a closer association between cognitive abilities and affective understanding among the autistic children…