Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.
In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. The goal was to examine the development of specific components of emotion comprehension in preschool children aged 3 to 5 years. Three tasks were used: context-free facial recognition of four primary and neutral emotions, and comprehension of external causes i.
Main results showed that emotion comprehension improves in year-olds. However, some components seemed to improve faster regardless of age. Labelling facial expressions remained the most complex task. When external causes that generate emotion were presented, joy tended to be the most recognized emotion, while anger, fear, and sadness came after and improved with age. At age 3, on the context-free facial recognition task, anger and sadness were best recognized, joy came in third place.
At age 5, joy took first place for this task. Fear remained the most difficult emotion to recognize along with neutral expression on this task for each age group. Finally, neutral emotions were the most difficult to recognize in all three tasks and for each age group. Emotion comprehension by children represents a multifaceted construct that involves a variety of components.
There is currently little agreement regarding the exact number of components that make up this competence. Eisenberg et al. For the comprehensive component, this definition includes the ability to understand which emotions are appropriate given the circumstances and to identify the causes and consequences of emotions.
