Emotion Expressiveness and Knowledge in Preschool-Age Children: Age-Related Changes

Emotion is a central feature of social interactions. In this study, we examined age-related changes in emotion expressiveness and emotion knowledge and how young children's emotion expressiveness and knowledge were related. A total of 300 children attending a daycare center contributed data for the study. Observation and interview data relevant to measures of emotion expressiveness and knowledge were collected and analyzed. Both emotion knowledge and expressed positive affect increased with age. Older preschool children expressed positive affect more frequently than did younger preschoolers. Older preschool children also labeled, recognized, and provided plausible causes mores accurately than did younger preschool children. In addition, we tested whether children's errors on the free labeling component conform to the structural model previously suggested by Bullock and Russell (1986) and found that preschool children were using systematic strategies for labeling emotion states. Relations between emotion expressiveness and emotion knowledge generally were not significant, suggesting that emotional competence is only gradually constructed by the child over the preschool years.