Cumulative effects of induced affective states in children: Accentuation, inoculation, and remediation.

Abstract

Little is known about the specific and potentially interactive impact of successive affect-inducing experiences. In the present study preschool children experienced two standard experimental affect inductions in succession and the effects were assessed on self-gratification, altruism, cognitive processing, and expressed affect. The states induced were happy, sad, or neutral, and the repeated inductions were either consistent (e.g., +/+) or inconsistent (e.g., +/-, -/+). The findings were as follows: (a) Only the first of the two affect inductions had an effect on selfgratification or altruism, with sad states increasing self-gratification and decreasing altruism. There was no indication that a second affect-inducing experience could remediate the behavioral consequences of a prior one. (b) Generative cognitive processing (producing a thought of an affective valence) was increased by both the ongoing affective state and the affective content of the material to be generated. Positive affect states or content increased the speed of processing, (c) Finally, children's memory for the thoughts they had produced was influenced also by affective state, with sad states increasing the latency for recall.

Affect and memory in young children

“…Children in the neutral affect condition at retrieval did show greater sadness (2.92) than children in the happy affect conditions (1.48) (t = -1.95, p < .05). Since affect inductions prior to retrieval were the second in a series, and research on multiple affect inductions suggest a strong primary effect, the apparently weaker impact of affect inductions at retrieval was not unexpected and was deemed consistent with the likelihood under natural conditions that mood states at retrieval will commonly be weaker than those at encoding (Barden et al, 1981;Barden et al, 1985).…”

“…Consistent with previous work (e.g., Barden et al, 1981), the videotape segments of children's facial expressions at baseline and after each induction were edited to a standard 12 seconds in length and used for facial ratings. The ratings were carried out by dividing each segment into three 4-second parts and rating each separately for happiness and sadness.…”

“…The affect induction procedure for the present experiment was based upon a standard cognitive induction procedure that has been used successfully in a number of studies (e.g., Barden et al, 1981;Barden, Garber, Leiman, Ford, & Masters, 1985;Moore et al, 1973;Rosenhan et al, 1974;Underwood et al, 1973) and has been validated using independent measures of affect (Masters et al, 1979). In this procedure, children generate a thought of a particular affective valence and then dwell upon it for a brief period of time (typically, 30 seconds).…”

“…The facial features used to judge the presence or absence of the affects were taken from the work of Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth (1971), and the coding scheme was consistent with that used by Masters et al (1979) and Barden et al (1981). All ratings were made using 9-point scales, where 1 indicated the absence of a particular affect but did not imply the presence of another affect (e.g., "l-sadness" did not imply any degree of happiness).…”

“…Of particular note has been the study of children's mood states and their effects on various patterns of social behavior. Experimental procedures to induce affective states have been shown to be valid, and children's moods have been demonstrated to influence their social behavior with other children (Barden, Garber, Duncan, & Masters, 1981;Harris & Siebel, 1975;Rosenhan, Underwood, & Moore, 1974;. The publication of both convergent and discriminant validity data on the induction procedure (Masters, Barden, & Ford, 1979;Teasdale & Taylor, 1981) has encouraged the utilization of experimentally induced affective states to explore the influence of emotion on learning (Masters et al, 1979) and other cognitive processes under carefully controlled experimental conditions.…”