Longitudinal evidence for an emotion-action lag on desire: The role of emotional understanding

Abstract Many previous studies have found that children understand much earlier what a character who has a false belief will do than what a character will feel. This gap between the understanding of action and emotion is known as the belief-emotion lag and to this day there is no convincing explanation as to why it happens. There are also no studies that have explored whether this same gap occurs in the understanding of desire. This longitudinal study had a twofold objective: to explore the existence of a lag between the prediction of action and emotion based on desire, and to search for the role that specific emotions could have in children’s answers. To this end, we administered the Test …

The Role of Language in the Relationship between Emotion Comprehension and Theory of Mind in Preschool Children

For several decades, there has been an interest in understanding how Emotion Comprehension (EC) and Theory of Mind (ToM) are related during the preschool years. In addition, the links between language and ToM (Astington & Baird, 2005; Schick, de Villiers, de Villiers, & Hoffmeister, 2007) and language and EC (Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Hughes, White, & Ensor, 2014; Pons, Lawson, Harris, & de Rosnay, 2003) have been studied. Numerous studies have highlighted the important role played of language in ToM (Astington & Jenkins, 1999). For some authors, the specific properties of language are necessary for the development of ToM, and not only those related to age and neurological maturity (de Villiers…

La Comprensión Asíncrona de las Emociones Básicas: un Estudio Longitudinal con Niños de 3 a 5 Años

El presente estudio tiene como finalidad explorar la trayectoria evolutiva de la comprensión de cuatro emociones en niños de tres a cinco años. Sabemos que los niños identifican las expresiones faciales y después entienden la causa de las emociones, pero ¿las emociones se comprenden a la vez, en el mismo momento evolutivo? Para llevar a cabo este estudio se evaluó de forma longitudinal a un grupo de 103 niños y niñas entre los 3 y los 5 años. A través del Test de Comprensión Emocional se midieron los componentes de identificación de la expresión emocional y el conocimiento de la causa de cuatro emociones –tristeza, alegría, enfado y miedo– a lo largo de los tres años. Los resultados confirm…

Supplemental Material, JBD866907_supplementary_figure_2 - The longitudinal interplay of emotion understanding, theory of mind, and language in the preschool years

Supplemental Material, JBD866907_supplementary_figure_2 for The longitudinal interplay of emotion understanding, theory of mind, and language in the preschool years by Renata Sarmento-Henrique, Laura Quintanilla, Beatriz Lucas-Molina, Patricia Recio and Marta Giménez-Dasí in International Journal of Behavioral Development

La evaluación multi-informante de la regulación emocional en edad preescolar: un estudio longitudinal

There is a broad consensus today about the need to use multi-informant assessment, especially when dealing with young children. However, there have been no studies conducted to compare different informants assessing emotion regulation at an early age. The aim of this study was to inquire about the coincidence of parents and teachers in assessing children's emotion self-regulation and to assess the stability of this assessment over time. We assessed emotion self-regulation by parents (n=34) and teachers (n=87) in a group of 108 3-year-old children that we followed over three school years. The Emotion Regulation Checklist was used. The results show that both parents and teachers perceive a de…

Supplemental Material, JBD866907_supplementary_figure_1 - The longitudinal interplay of emotion understanding, theory of mind, and language in the preschool years

Supplemental Material, JBD866907_supplementary_figure_1 for The longitudinal interplay of emotion understanding, theory of mind, and language in the preschool years by Renata Sarmento-Henrique, Laura Quintanilla, Beatriz Lucas-Molina, Patricia Recio and Marta Giménez-Dasí in International Journal of Behavioral Development

The longitudinal interplay of emotion understanding, theory of mind, and language in the preschool years

Emotion comprehension (EC), theory of mind (ToM), and language are particularly important aspects of child development. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in understanding how these three variables are related to preschool children. However, results have been contradictory, and it is not clear how EC, ToM, and language are associated. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationships among EC, ToM, and language through a longitudinal study. Participants were 105 children (49 girls and 56 boys). EC, ToM, and language skills were assessed when children were 3, 4, and 5 years old. The cross-lagged model confirmed that EC preceded ToM in time. The half-longitudinal model …

The multi-informant assessment of emotion regulation in pre-school years: A longitudinal study

The Relationship between Emotion Regulation and Emotion Knowledge in Preschoolers: A Longitudinal Study

Numerous studies have shown the important role of both emotion regulation (ER) and emotion knowledge (EK) in child development. Despite the number of studies carried out on both variables, there is practically no research on the developmental relationship between these two constructs. We present a longitudinal study to explore the relationship between EK and ER in preschoolers in which we measured these variables over 3 academic years in a cohort of 108 preschool children using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC). The ERC is divided into 2 subscales: Emotional Regulation (ER) and Lability/Negativity (L/N). Two cross-lagged models were construct…

Six Weeks of Confinement: Psychological Effects on a Sample of Children in Early Childhood and Primary Education

Spain has been one of the countries most affected by the health crisis derived from COVID-19. Within this country, the city of Madrid has registered the highest number of infections and deaths. This circumstance led to the adoption of strict confinement measures for a period of 6 weeks. The objective of the present study was to investigate the psychological effects that this confinement has had on the psychological well-being of a sample of children from Madrid. A total of 167 families with children aged between 3 and 11 years participated in this study. The parents evaluated the children through the System of Evaluation of Children and Adolescents (SENA) scale in the month of February and …