Photographs of facial emotional expressions posed by adults classified as mentally retarded were judged by familiar and unfamiliar adults who were not mentally retarded. Happiness and sadness were accurately posed most often. The ability to encode facial emotional expressions was correlated with assessments of interpersonal competence provided by…

Aspects of a child's social environment, in this case those connected with networks and dyadic interaction, are influenced by different maternal and child characteristics. The young child's social network is influenced by at-risk status but not by chronological age. Not only do families with handicapped infants receive more support from formal…

The first part of this paper discusses presentations by other symposium participants which addressed different facets of the developmental paths involved in understanding one's own emotional states, the emotional states of others, why one feels what one does, and whether or not one shows these feelings expressively to others. It is the premise of…

Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" is used as a case study to illustrate the universal and necessary unity which binds loneliness, hostility, anxiety, and despair over the possibility of communicating within individual isolated human consciousness. (HOD/Author)

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)

The predictive relation between neonatal behavior and temperament at 24 months was examined for 67 infants selected from the full socioeconomic status (SES) distribution. Initial ratings were made when the infants were one to four days old. Irritable neonates were rated as more upset, less attentive to stimuli, and less responsive to the staff at…

Measures humor appreciation (including mirth, subjective ratings, and response sets), comprehension, and production in children between the ages of 10 and 14. Relates humor to several areas of competence manifested at school. (HOD)

Regulated expressiveness (the modification of expressive behavior) is a complex phenomenon. Accomplished basically in four ways, regulated expressiveness has developmental dimensions, motivational precursors, and cognitive antecedents, including perspective-taking ability and the growth of self-awareness. Ability to regulate expressiveness appears…

Examined parents' responses to emotional distress in their preschool children and assessed the relation of these responses to children's competence. Data on parent-child interactions was collected for 30 families by means of home observations, parent self-reports, observer ratings, and child interviews. Preschool competence was assessed by teacher…

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)

It is axiomatic that context influences interpersonal behaviors, yet communication researchers have had limited success in generating a set of conceptual or operational definitions for the situation variable. Two studies were conducted to examine emotion-eliciting qualities as the basis for such a typology and the relationship of situations…

Two studies examined the development of children's knowledge of the situations that provoke emotion. English and Dutch (Study 1) and Nepalese (Study 2) children were presented common emotional terms and asked to describe situations likely to provoke each emotion. In both cases, the determinants suggested by the children indicated that children…

This study explored the ability of 273 adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) to recognize facial affect cues. In general, the EBD subjects were less accurate than non-EBD peers in recognizing facial affect cues. However, adolescents with externalizing disorders were as proficient as non-EBD adolescents in their recognition of…

From earliest infancy, a typically developing child imitates or mirrors the facial expressions, postures and gestures, and emotional behavior of others. Where does this capacity come from, and what function does it serve? What happens when imitation is impaired? Synthesizing cutting-edge research emerging from a range of disciplines, this…

Teachers' ratings are often used as early as the preschool period to provide an overall picture of children's behavioral adjustment and social competence. The goals of this study are to (1) show the relations among general, outcome-oriented observational categories of preschoolers' social competence and (2) specify those discrete emotions and…