What is going on in the minds of young children when it seems they are daydreaming or appear to be scatterbrained?
A study that my coauthor, Susanne A Denham, and I conducted recently shows that inattentive children may sometimes be absorbed in trying to figure out the emotions of their parents, siblings, teachers and friends.
Young children are vitally interested in which emotions these important people in their small social world are feeling in respect to them and others, why they are doing so and whether their emotional displays are “real” or “fake.”
We found that children who have a better knowledge of emotions have no need to ponder these questions. They become free to pay attention to their social partners, to play and to academic learning, among many other things.
Why Emotion Knowledge Matters
The research project, named “Elefant” – short for “Emotional Learning is fantastic” – surveyed 261 children from 33 kindergartens in Lower Saxony, a state in northern Germany, as well as their teachers and parents.
Two separate surveys over an interval of 14 months were conducted. The study tested children’s “emotion knowledge”: that is, their ability to identify facial expressions of emotions and typical situations that give rise to emotions, such as happiness when receiving a birthday gift.
It also included knowledge of strategies for controlling one’s own emotional expressions. A further component was the slowly developing insight that people often differ in their emotions because they appraise situations in light of their own preferences and beliefs.
Along with this, children’s self-regulation of their behavior, their memory span and their language skills were tested.
