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Updated: Jun 20, 2026
08:09
Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
SIGNS OF EMOTION: WHAT CAN PREVERBAL CHILDREN "SAY" ABOUT INTERNAL STATES?
1University of California, Davis.
Infant Mental Health Journal
|September 15, 2009
Summary
Preverbal children use symbolic gestures to express emotions and feelings, revealing sophisticated internal worlds. This research highlights gestures as a key method for understanding infant emotional development and communication.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Investigating infant emotional understanding is challenging due to the absence of speech.
- Preverbal children's ability to articulate internal states remains largely unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if preverbal children use symbolic gestures to represent emotion concepts and feelings.
- To explore the potential of symbolic gestures as a methodology for studying early mental processes.
Main Methods:
- Observational study of 22 children (5-28 months) in a childcare setting.
- Videotaping and coding of symbolic gesture use by children and caregivers.
- Qualitative analysis of gesture context and significance.
Main Results:
- Twenty of 22 children used symbolic gestures.
- Six children used emotion-specific gestures (e.g., sad, scared).
- Five children used feeling-specific gestures (e.g., sleepy).
Conclusions:
- Symbolic gestures demonstrate the complexity of infants' internal emotional lives.
- Gestures offer a promising avenue for researching early explicit mental states.
- Symbolic gestures can serve as a therapeutic tool for emotional expression and understanding in young children.
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