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Exploring the perception of stress in childhood and early adolescence

Erika Lutin1, Walter De Raedt2, Jean Steyaert3

  • 1Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium; imec, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|December 17, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Child Psychology
  • Stress Research
  • Developmental Science

Background:

  • Stressful experiences can negatively impact child development.
  • Understanding children's perception of stress is crucial for effective interventions.
  • Adult stress perception is characterized by low valence and high arousal, but children's perception remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how children perceive and conceptualize stress.
  • To compare children's stress perception with adult models.
  • To explore the influence of age and sex on children's stress perception.

Main Methods:

  • 35 children completed verbal knowledge tasks about stress.
  • Participants rated valence and arousal for emotion-evoking vignettes.
  • An experience sampling survey with a stress thermometer and pictorial scales was used.

Main Results:

  • Children's perception of stress was primarily focused on valence, not arousal.
  • Older children showed a greater focus on arousal than younger children.
  • Girls demonstrated a higher degree of arousal focus compared to boys.

Conclusions:

  • Children's stress perception is influenced by developmental and individual factors.
  • Arousal focus in stress perception increases with age and is higher in girls.
  • Measuring stress using a single dimension is not recommended due to individual variability.

Keywords:
ChildrenEmotion perceptionExperience sampling methodSelf-Assessment ManikinStress

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