Scripts: Children's Understanding of Emotion

成年人能够识别愤怒、悲伤、嫉妒、恐惧、喜悦或其他情绪。他们对识别出的每一种情绪的了解，然后指导他们的思想和行动。这项研究项目探索儿童如何发展识别情绪并获得关于情绪的知识的能力。该项目的中心假设是，愤怒、悲伤、嫉妒、恐惧等概念可以被认为是剧本。例如，(成人)恐惧的剧本可以被认为是一系列元素：危险被识别(原因)，面部和声音传播恐惧(表情)，身体反应(生理)，人感觉不好(主观感觉)和逃离(行为后果)。孩子们必须一个元素一个元素地构建这个脚本，并学习它的标签。因此，在不同的年龄段，孩子们对同一种情绪有不同的剧本。多年来，人们普遍认为，儿童天生就有概念，或者很快就会形成概念，至少是与面部表情相关的基本情感概念。然而，最近的研究挑战了这一假设。例如，学龄前儿童将厌恶的面部表情理解为愤怒，而不是厌恶--尽管他们知道厌恶这个词。孩子们被要求在人群中寻找愤怒的人，他们会选择所有表现出负面面部表情的人。目前尚不清楚情绪脚本是如何开始的，元素何时进入脚本，以及是什么原因导致每个元素进入脚本。这个项目将研究最早的情绪类别，调查婴儿和蹒跚学步的孩子可能简单地将所有情绪分为积极和消极的想法。然后，该项目将研究是什么驱使孩子将“负面情绪”划分为更具体的情绪。一个可能的可能性是愤怒和悲伤的面部表情之间的差异，但随后的分歧可能基于原因或行为后果的不同。例如，愤怒和恐惧之间的区别可能是基于这个人是以敌对的方式行事还是逃跑。该项目还将询问孩子们如何处理一个常见的情况：对方情绪冲突的不同线索(例如，有人哭了，但说：“我很好”)。众所周知，儿童时期的情绪、社交和学业问题与(“情商”)理解情绪的缺陷有关。孩子们似乎需要理解他们亲眼目睹和经历的情绪。然而，奇怪的是，这种认识的早期发展是一个被忽视的研究领域，使得预防和干预变得困难。家长和教师需要基本的信息，了解孩子们使用的情感词汇是什么意思，以及他们如何解释他们看到的情感迹象。通过波士顿学院的情绪发展实验室，不同的本科生、研究生和博士后将与詹姆斯·罗素博士合作，研究幼儿情绪理解的这些问题。关于孩子知道什么以及他们何时知道的经验支持的信息将告诉父母和老师，当他们开始理解周围人的情绪时，如何引导他们。

Adultes are able to identify anger, grief, jealousy, fear, joy, or other emotions when we they it. Their knowledge about each emotion they identify then guides their thoughts and actions. This research project explores how children develop the ability to identify emotions and obtain knowledge about them. The project's central hypothesis is that concepts for anger, grief, jealousy, fear, etc. can be thought of as scripts. For example, the (adult) script for fear can be considered a sequence of elements: a danger is recognized (cause), the face and voice broadcast fear (expression), the body reacts (physiology), the person feels bad (subjective feeling) and flees (behavioral consequence). The child must build this script element by element and learn a label for it. Thus, at different ages, children have different scripts for the same emotion. For many years, the common assumption has been that children are born with, or quickly develop, concepts for at least the basic emotions tied to facial expressions. Recent research, however, has challenged this assumption. For example, preschool children interpret the facial expression of disgust as anger rather than as disgust -- even though they know the word disgust. Asked to find the angry person in a crowd, toddlers select all persons showing any negative facial expression. It is not known how emotion scripts begin, when elements enter the script, and what causes each element to enter the script. This project will study the earliest emotion categories, investigating the idea that infants and toddlers may simply divide all emotions into positive and negative. The project will then study what drives the child to divide "negative emotion" into more specific ones. A likely candidate is the difference between angry and sad facial expressions, but subsequent divisions may be based on differences in cause or behavioral consequence. For example, the distinction between anger and fear may be based on whether the person acts in a hostile way or flees. The project will also ask how children deal with a common situation: different cues to the other's emotion conflict (e.g., someone cries, but says, "I'm fine"). Emotional, social, and academic problems throughout childhood are known to be associated with deficits in understanding emotions (in "emotional intelligence"). Children, it seems, need to understand the emotions they witness and experience. Yet, the early development of this understanding is a curiously neglected area of study, making prevention and intervention difficult. Parents and teachers need basic information on what children mean by the emotion words they use and how they interpret the signs of emotion they witness. Through the Emotion Development Lab at Boston College, diverse undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students will work with Dr. James Russell to investigate these questions of emotion understanding in young children. Empirically supported information about what children know and when they know it will inform parents and teachers how to guide children as they come to understand the emotions of those around them.