Determinación de la constante del momento de inercia.

The Emotion-Recognition Task is the subject o f this chapter. It was developed through consideration o f the ongoing attachment work o f the London Parent-Child Project (described in detail in the previous chapter), attachment literature, and relevant literature on emotional development in early childhood (see, for instance, Saami & Harris, 1989; Harris, 1989; Ekman, 1972; Ekman & Friesen,

1971; Harris & Olthof, 1982; Cuceloglu, 1970; Plutchik, 1991; Cassidy, 1994; Cassidy & Marvin, 1989/1992). The task and procedure were designed by the research team o f the London Parent-Child Project (led by Peter Fonagy, Miriam Steele, and Howard Steele), of which the author is a part, with the aim of

observing differences in early childhood emotionality. The instmment used in the task was drawn by a professional artist, and is designed to elicit responses to various emotion-provoking social situations presented to the participants during a two part semi-structured interview, by way o f cartoon. In phase one of the task the child is asked to identify line drawings o f 'basic' emotion expressions (plus two faces displaying multiple emotion), and in phase two o f the task the child is asked to consider various emotion-provoking situations, to assign expressions to the characters involved in the scenes, and to discuss the emotion(s) o f the characters.

Evidence supporting this type o f "cartoon" approach can be seen in the research of Ekman and Friesen (1971), in which emotional expressions were used in 'arrested animation,' effectively, with six- and seven-year-old children.

Participants in this study were able to match cartoon-drawn expressions to

that six- and seven-year-old children find this 'inanimate' task neither artificial nor impoverished, and undoubtedly see these type o f pictures as meaningful. Much related work has been carried out using photographs and 'line drawings' to represent primary emotions to children (see, for instance, Plutchik, 1991).

Cuceloglu (1970) first formalised the idea o f using 'simple ergonomic features' in the study of emotion recognition by using four eyebrow types, three eye types, and five mouth types. Cuceloglu combined these features to produce 60 different expressions (not all of them anatomically possible). Students from different cultures were asked to decide which emotion words were applicable to the various simple faces. Agreement was obtained on more than just the 'basic emotions' (such as the six defined by Ekman (1972): sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise). Two 'mixed' expressions, happy with angry (naughty) and surprised with sad, were reliably identified as well, as was a 'neutral' expression. These are the nine expressions, presented in the form of line drawings, used in the present Emotion-Recognition Task. The task utilises these expressions during phase one, where the participant is asked to label them, and in phase two, where the

participant is asked to assign expressions following a discussion of cartoon characters' feelings.

The design of this task is such that assessment depends heavily on the use of emotional language as an indication o f emotional understanding. The creators justify this 'style' o f measurement with children o f this age through consideration of

such research examples as Demos (1974), Harris and Olthof (1982), and, recently. Brown and Dunn (1996). These studies reveal evidence that a semi-structured interview technique and labelling task such as the one presently used make up a

valid tool for eliciting specific details about the child's emotionality, in such specific domains as the spontaneous emotional vocabulary (range o f emotions discussed), as well as for measuring the child's ability to identify, make

discriminations about, and discuss the 'basic' list o f nine emotions identified by past research (such as Ekman, 1972; Plutchik, 1991; Cuceloglu, 1970). However,

efforts have been made in this study to further justify this mode o f measurement by ensuring that the task is measuring more than just the child's verbal abilities.

These efforts are manifest in, for instance, a non-verbal feature being incorporated into the task design. Across the task, for every cartoon character the child is asked to consider verbally, he/she is also asked to give a non-verbal illustration. The child is asked to discuss the feelings o f characters involved in each emotive scene, as well as to illustrate this discussion by picking a card displaying a facial

expression for the character of interest. Furthermore, a measurement o f language abilities was also carried out so that the variable of language ability could be subsequently considered and controlled for. A discussion of language abilities and response to this task will, therefore, be taken up in more detail in Chapter Three.

Evidence regarding what is to be expected o f children in terms of emotion recognition was also considered during the development of this task. Smiley & Huttenlocker (1989) have reviewed emotional development studies which chart age-related progression in such skills. This review shows that children from normal samples typically display the following discriminatory abilities regarding facial expressions and emotion:

all four-year-olds identify: happy

by five years old many children identify: angry, surprised, and scared by seven years old many children identify: sad

Bullock & Russel (1985) show, however, that with 'accompanying' text (narratives) provided, all four-year-olds display an understanding of 'basic' feeling states.

Harris (1989) points out that one must be sure not to assume that the ability to differentiate between facial expressions is enough to indicate differentiation among internal emotions, and that it is inadequate to rely simply on facial expressions alone in measuring emotional functioning. The present work takes both age-related findings (see previous chapter for more detail) and this warning from Harris into account, and as a result, has created a task incorporating a range o f measurements which assess both basic skills that a normal child would be expected to have acquired by the sixth year, and other areas which may be quite challenging to a child of this age, both in identification of facial expressions and in the task's more in-depth look at children's discussion of emotions within the context of emotion- provoking situations. The main concern of this task, in light o f existing evidence regarding basic capacities in early childhood, is the variation among individuals in ability to make identifications about, and discuss, emotions in early childhood. 2.1.1. Specific aims of the task

Cartoon situations were created for the five to six-year-old child, to be meaningful to a male or female of that age, and likely to provoke a discussion o f a range o f feelings or emotions. Clarity of the cartoon situations for a five or six- year-old was a concentration while developing the task, as was inclusion of events which are familiar to the lives of children at this age. Several goals were

identified during the creation of the task, specific areas of the child's emotional understanding that the task sets out to measure. The original areas of interest are as follows: spontaneous labelling o f facial expressions; range o f emotion

vocabulary yielded from range o f emotions contained in child's discussion o f the characters' feelings; range o f expressions utilised over the task to illustrate the discussion o f the characters' feelings; embellishment and plausibility o f discussion when child is asked to justify his/her decisions regarding the assignment o f emotions and facial expressions to the characters; child's overall ability to be coherent in discussing emotions, expressions, and emotion-provoking scenes; child's display o f emotion-matching or empathy in the family-oriented scenes included in the task; and child's inclination and ability with respect to discussing emotional ambivalence. The collective aim of these goals is to yield information about a range o f the individual's understanding o f emotions in the sixth year that is meaningful in light of the existing knowledge obtained from the literature about emotionality at this stage of life (see above and previous chapter for a review).

A number o f studies have considered individual differences in children under three regarding behaviours associated with understanding o f 'basic' emotions, including identification and production of emotional expressions (Camras, 1989; Field & Walden, 1982; Stifter & Fox, 1986), as well as individual differences in causal attributions about single-emotion events (Denham, 1986; Dunn et al., 1991a; Howe & Ross, 1990). Response to another's distress (empathy/matching emotion) has also been considered for individual differences in the under-threes (Cummings, Hollenbeck, lanotti, Radke-Yarrow, & Zahn-Waxler, 1986; Main & George, 1985). The author, along with the research group, therefore observed room in the literature for more evidence with respect to individual differences in such skills for the older child, in addition to seeing the need for information with respect to individual differences in other more complex skills such as the discussion o f mixed emotion.

A very recent study completed by Brown and Dunn (1996) also seeks to open the line of research into 'mixed emotion.' Brown and Dunn (1996) found that

significant stability in individual differences exists between ability in labelling and expressing an understanding o f basic emotions and simple emotion events assessed at three years old, and understanding of ambiguous or multiple emotions at six.

Observing the individual's range of emotional discussion was also an important consideration when the aims of this task were determined. This endeavour is based on evidence submitted by studies mentioned above (such as Demos, 1974; Harris and Olthof, 1982) which use semi-structured discussions to yield the emotion 'vocabularies' of participants. Interest in this variable is also based upon developmental evidence considering the topics of maternal sensitivity and attachment. These areas of study indicate that children learn to regulate the 'range' o f emotions they discuss based on the expressive and receptive boundaries that are set for them early in life in their parental relationships. It has been suggested that children who have experienced 'attunement' to their complete range of emotions in infancy will display an ease in communicating about and expressing a wider range of emotions throughout life (see, for instance. Stem, 1985).

Empirical evidence with respect to the attachment relationship shows that a securely attached child expects, has an internal representation of, an available and responsive caregiver (Sroufe, 1985; Cassidy, 1994). Such children express negative emotion and expect that this will be allowed, and responded to in a comforting way. An internal representation o f this type of first emotional relationship also appears to enable children to internalise a capacity for flexible regulation of emotion (Cassidy, 1994; Thompson, 1994). Evidence shows that children who

have an avoidant strategy with caregiver in Strange Situation are anticipating rejection and have difficulty expressing negative emotions, leading to 'restrictions' with concern to emotionality (see Cassidy, 1994; and Steele & Steele, 1994). Children who have been categorised as ambivalent are seen as expecting

inconsistent, undependable, insensitive, and ineffective parenting, leading to the observation o f dependence and helplessness which has been documented (Cassidy & Berlin, 1994; Cassidy, 1994; Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Kobak & Duemmler,

1994). These children are able to express negative emotion, but in an amplified, overwhelmed manner. Goldberg, MacKay-Soroka, and Rochester (1994) also yield empirical evidence for an association between patterns of attachment and patterns of parental response to a range of emotion expression. These researchers viewed videotapes of Strange Situation reunions to determine what messages about emotion expression mothers give to their infants in relation to infant-mother

attachment classifications. Mothers of secure infants (at 12 months) in this sample attended to the full range o f emotion display and responded in general more

frequently than the mothers from the insecure groups. Mothers o f avoidant infants were less responsive in general than the mothers from the secure and ambivalent groups and were particularly unresponsive to expressions of negative emotion. Mothers of ambivalent/resistant infants were especially responsive to negative affect, but responded minimally to positive affect. Based on such evidence with regards to the range of emotions discussed/expressed in childhood, the creators of the Emotion-Recognition Task saw this, too, as a rich area o f enquiry for the task to cover.

In summary, the above introduction seeks to direct the reader to a range of relevant background literature that was considered by the author and the London Parent-Child Project while designing the Emotion-Recognition Task and defining its aims. The purpose of the remainder of this chapter is to describe the

subsequent process of operationalising the task. 2.2. M ethod

2.2.1. Subjects

63 children from the original London Parent-Child Project cohort of 100 completed the Emotion-Recognition Task in the sixth year. The children were seen between their 66th and 74th months, resulting in a mean age of 70.7 months. 29 (46%) of the children are girls and 34 (54%) are boys.

2.2.2. Description of the task and procedure

Twelve short stories, each describing a sequence o f events, were presented to subjects. Short narratives were presented by the experimenter to describe the situations. There are equivalent male and female versions (see Appendices 2.1a - 2.1/ and 2.2a - 2.2/). The scenes will be summarised here in the order they were presented, and the standardised protocol is presented in Table 2.1 below. The first situation, the Ice Cream scene, is about a boy/girl who has just received an ice cream cone, and then proceeds to drop the ice cream off the cone. In the second situation, the Bicycle scene, the child in the story falls off his/her bicycle as his/her mother and father sit nearby watching. In story number three, the Puzzle scene, a child is working on his/her jigsaw puzzle and needs help as his/her father comes home from work. However, his/her father chooses to read the newspaper. Mum and dad go away for the weekend, leaving the child watching them go, in story

four, the Suitcase scene. In story five, the Sibling scene, a child is working on a drawing, and wants to show his/her picture to mum, but mum is busy feeding an infant sibling. Story six, the Biscuit scene, shows mum telling her child that no more biscuits are allowed, and then shows the child disobeying mum and getting caught. Separation is at issue in story seven, when mum and child say goodbye at the school gates. A child’s painting is ruined with spilled paint, as a friend looks on, in story eight, the Paint scene. A child’s juice is taken by another child while he/she is out of the room in story nine, the Juice scene. In story ten, the Building Block scene, one child is having trouble building with blocks at school, another child is having great success, and the teacher comes to see how everything is

going. Reunion is at issue in story eleven, when mum and child meet at the end of school. In the final story, the Marble scene, two children are having fun playing marbles together, when another child comes along enticing one of the pair away with a new ball, leaving the other all alone with his/her marbles.

Firstly, participant is told that he/she will be joining in a cartoon ’activity’ with experimenter. Before presentation o f the above twelve stories, the participant is shown line drawings of nine primary emotion faces on a sheet of white paper, and asked to give a spontaneous description of the emotion expressed by each face (see Appendix 2.3). The faces shown are intended to represent the six basic emotion faces as defined by Ekman (1972) and two more complex emotion faces plus a ’neutral’ face, identified reliably in the research of Cuceloglu (1970). The expressions are for the following emotions: sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise, and two faces displaying the mixed emotions of happy and angry (naughtiness), as well as surprised and sad. After this spontaneous labelling, phase

one of the task, the experimenter then takes participant back through the faces, describing an appropriate emotion label for each, also pointing out a box containing duplicate copies of these faces on acetate, explaining that these faces are available for use in an upcoming activity which involves discussing the feelings o f cartoon characters. The cartoon situations are then presented to the participant in phase two o f the task. After each story, as described above, subjects are asked how characters in the story might be feeling, and asked to assign a face to that emotion, and justify their responses. Spanning twelve different cartoons, there are a total of 22 figures with blank faces, in order that the subject can supply each character with a facial expression during the task. The normal cartoon format is to have a child at the centre o f a social interaction, with either a friend, parent(s), or a teacher involved in the scene as well.

Table 2.1:

Standardised Protocol for Emotion-Recognition Task Phase one:

First o f all, I have some pictures of faces. I need for you to talk to me about how each person/face is feeling.

(show faces to child, and ask them to label feeling for each face—left column down, right column down)

Now, let's go through them again. I want to tell you what I think these faces are feeling like. (give child the correct emotion label for each face)

Phase two:

Now, I want to show you some cartoon pictures, and what I would like you to do, is to look at the pictures, listen to what I have to say about them, and then tell me what the person in the picture is feeling. Over there is a box filled up with all o f the faces we have just looked at together, and what you'll see is that we need to use those faces when talking about how the cartoon characters are feeling because...look! (give child a peek at one scene)...the artist forgot the faces!