Disordered children's acknowledgment of multiple emotions

Two groups of normal and disordered children (6 to 7 years old and 10 to 11 years old) were presented with stories that could evoke the simultaneous experience of two different emotional impulses, especially when the two emotions were contrary in nature. Acknowledgment of the multiple emotional character of the situations occurred with the same frequency among normal and disordered children, but the disordered children more often denied all emotions or claimed that all negative emotions were applicable to the stories that contained two negative impulses. Disordered children also ascribed a higher intensity to acknowledged emotions than did normal children. It is argued that the acknowledgment of emotions is experienced as threatening by disordered children, which prevents them from analyzing the situation as thoroughly as normal children would.