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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
How does Sam feel?: Children's labelling and drawing of basic emotions
Claire Brechet1, René Baldy, Delphine Picard
1Dêveloppement Cognition Acquisition, Department of Psychology, University of Montpellier III, Montpellier, France. claire.brechet@univ-montp3.fr
The British Journal of Developmental Psychology
|December 10, 2009
Summary
This study shows children aged 6-11 can label and draw basic emotions. A drawing task effectively assesses children's understanding of emotions like happiness and sadness, differentiating them from complex emotions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Child Emotion Recognition
Background:
- Children's ability to understand and express emotions is crucial for social development.
- Previous research often studied emotion labeling and depiction separately.
- The utility of human figure drawing tasks for assessing emotion comprehension in children remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare children's ability to freely label emotions from scenarios versus depicting emotions in drawings.
- To evaluate the effectiveness of a human figure drawing task for assessing basic emotion comprehension in children.
- To investigate the developmental progression of emotion labeling and depiction skills.
Main Methods:
- A comparative study involving children aged 6 to 11 years.
- Utilized a labeling task where children identified emotions from detailed scenarios.
- Employed a drawing task requiring children to depict basic emotions in human figures.
Main Results:
- Both labeling and drawing tasks revealed similar developmental patterns in emotion recognition.
- A significant distinction was observed between the recognition of simple emotions (happiness, sadness) and complex emotions (anger, fear, disgust).
- Children's performance on the drawing task correlated with their ability to label emotions.
Conclusions:
- A human figure drawing task is a viable method for assessing children's comprehension of basic emotions.
- The findings support the use of drawing tasks alongside traditional labeling methods in developmental research.
- Results offer insights into the developmental trajectory of emotion conceptualization and perceptual skills in children.
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