The relations between emotional understanding, intellectual functioning, and disruptive behavior problems in elementary-school-aged children

Abstract

This study examined individual differences in children's emotional understanding and behavioral adjustment. Participants included 220 first- and second-grade children (75% regular education, 25% special education) who were individually interviewed using the Kusche Affective Interview--Revised. Dependent measures of emotional understanding and experience included the ability to provide personal examples of 10 different emotions and the cues used for recognition of five emotions in oneself and other persons. Children were also administered the WISC-R Vocabulary, Block Design, and Coding subtests. One parent independently completed an Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist for each child. Results indicated that children who were rated as higher in behavior problems showed deficits in emotional understanding. Intellectual functioning was negatively associated with behavior problems and attenuated the effects of behavior problems on emotional understanding. Implications of the current findings for prevention and treatment programs for children with behavior problems are discussed.

Emotion regulation and understanding: implications for child psychopathology and therapy

“…It is also uncertain whether the evidence suggests limited emotion understanding or a reluctance to discuss emotions (or some combination) among children experiencing significant psychological problems (cf. Cook et al, 1994). Considering also the paucity of work in general, conclusions discussed are tentative and await additional work.…”

“…For example, abused and maltreated children exhibit deficits in the recognition of face expressions of emotion (e.g., Camras, Grow, & Ribordy, 1983;Camras & Rappaport, 1993;Camras et al, 1990;Camras et al, 1988). Maltreated children, children at risk for disruptive behavior disorders, and ''hardto-manage'' preschoolers demonstrated poorly developed understandings of the causes of emotion, for example, by providing fewer appropriate examples of triggers or cues for emotion (e.g., Camras, Sachs-Alter, & Ribordy, 1996;Cook, Greenberg, & Kusche, 1994;Greenberg et al, 1995;Rogosch, Cicchetti, & Aber, 1995;Shipman & Zeman, 1999). In one study of maltreated children, not only was the emotion understanding of the maltreated children lower than nonmaltreated youth but also the mothers of maltreated children were less likely to discuss emotional topics in a mother-child interactions task (Shipman & Zeman, 1999), recalling the important scaffolding role of parents in emotional development.…”

Emotions in Social Information Processing and Their Relations With Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Referred Aggressive Boys

“…Several studies of emotion processes and aggressive behavior may be relevant to the SIP model. Concerning encoding and interpretation, studies of emotion attribution in aggressive boys have shown that aggressive behavior problems are related to atypical labeling of emotion expressions (Cook, Greenberg, & Kusche, 1994;Izard, Schultz, & Ackerman, 1997). Whether this involves systematic attribution of specific emotions (for example, to consider a sad facial expression angry) and how these attributions relate to the intent attributions studied in the SIP framework is, however, unclear.…”

Das Emotionsverständnis von viktimisierten und mobbenden Kindern im Kindergarten - Ansatzpunkte für eine Prävention?

“…Für Kinder mit externalisierenden Problematiken (Aggression, ADHS) konnten konsistent schlechtere Leistungen im Emotionserkennen (Nowicki u. Duke, 1994;Cadesky, Mota, Schachar, 2000;Walker u. Leister, 1994) und im Verstehen von Emotionsursachen nachgewiesen werden (Hughes, Dunn, White, 1998;Cook, Greenberg, Kusche, 1994 (Fonzi et al, 1999;Nowicki u. Duke, 1994;Cadesky, Mota, Schachar, 2000;Walker u. Leister, 1994;Woods et al, 2009;Baumgartner u. Alsaker, 2008). Bei viktimisierten Kindern wären Probleme im Verständnis von Emotionsursachen und in der Modulation/Enkodierung des Emotionsausdrucks (Regulation und Verbergen) kongruent mit den Befunden von Mahady et al (2000), Cowie und Berdonini (2002), Hughes, Dunn und White (1998) und Southam-Gerow und Kendall (2000.…”