[Emotional perception of elemental movement. Study on a population of school age children]

Our goal is to examine the emotional influence of perceived basic motions on cognitive processes in childhood. The main hypothesis of this study proposes that the perception of motion will subsequently influence cognitive processing in a specific, emotional manner. We studied 90 children aged nine to 12 years old. On a screen they were shown a black-shaped disk moving in one of three different directions associated with positive, negative and neutral valences. Furthermore, both before and after the children had seen the motion, they were asked to perform a writing speed task (numbers counting down). The results show that (1) children attribute an emotional valence to the "positive" motion and (2) the writing speed cognitive task is influenced by the "negative" motion. Thus, we suggest that basic motions can elicit changes in emotional manner in childhood to perceptive and executive processes according to their specific trajectory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).