Carroll E. Izard - US grants

The principal aims of this project are to (1) delineate the developmental course of patterns of emotion expressions in affectively positive and negative mother/infant interactions and to assess the relationship of these emotion expression variables to measures of personality/temperament traits, (2) determine the ontogeny of the infant's ability to discriminate or respond differentially to the mother's expressions of joy, anger, and sadness, (3) examine the infant's ability to imitate, learn or perform cognitive/psychomotor tasks following mother/infant interactions characterized by mother's expressions of interest/joy, anger, and sadness, (4) study the developmental changes in selected physiological concomitants of infant emotion expressions in interactions characterized by mother's expressions of joy, sadness, and anger, and (5) evaluate early emotion expression variables, cognitive/psychomotor performance measures (obtained during positive and negative emotion conditions), and patterns of physiological responses as predictors of social, emotional, and cognitive competence in later years. Emotion expressions are measured by Izard's facial movement coding and affect identification systems (Max and Affex), cognitive capacities by measures adapted from Kagan (1978) and Uzgiris and Hunt (1975), infant temperament by Rothbart's Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Mothers Personality by Jackson Personality Research Form, Quality of Attachment by Ainsworth's system and later competence by methods developed by Block and Block, Sroufe, and others. The proposed research will attempt to reaffirm and extend our previous findings on the stability and significance of early emotion expression variables. The distinctly new themes of the present proposal include developmental changes in response to mother's sadness and anger expressions, the ontogeny of discrimination of these two important negative emotions in dynamic mother/infant interactions, the effects of mild stress (sadness/anger emotion expressions) on infant's cognitive/psychomotor functioning, the psychophysiology of infant's emotion expressions, and the analysis of infant's physiological responses during positive and negative mother/infant interactions, and the use of stress-related performance measures and patterns of physiological responses in the prediction of later competence. Evidence for the effectiveness of infant emotion variables in predicting later competence will have significant implications for the early detection and prevention of mental health problems.

This ongoing program of research has led to several discoveries in the domain of early emotional development. First, it made it possible to determine the infant's repertoire of emotion expressions, which are vital to parent-child communication and social development. It also found what emotion expressions we can expect in different situations as the child matures. The research has demonstrated that mothers' emotion experiences and styles of emotion expression significantly influence the infants well-being and performance. Finally, the project has demonstrated that the expressive behaviors of infancy are more than mere responses to a momentary situation or passing event. Children in the first two years of life tend to have characteristic ways of expressing their emotions in response to both happy-playful and more demanding or mildly stressful situations. The research to be undertaken will show how pre- school children control or regulate emotion expressions and what patterns of emotion expression are stable and effective through the first 6-1/2 years of life.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will implement and evaluate an emotion-centered intervention, the Emotions Curriculum (EC), for economically disadvantaged children in Head Start. We followed differential emotions theory in translating findings from basic research on emotional development (emotion knowledge, emotion perception bias, emotion regulation, emotion socialization) into a thoroughly emotion-centered prevention program. A substantial part of the empirical basis for EC came from our longitudinal studies of emotional development and social behavior in Head Start children. Emotion theory, emotion research, and community (Head Start staff, teacher, parent, child) feedback from preliminary implementations of EC guided the development of EC techniques for increasing emotion knowledge, modulating emotions, and utilizing motivation inherent in emotion feelings. Such techniques and our emphasis on emotion modulation and emotion utilization represent distinctive features of EC. Effective modulation and utilization of the emotions not only reduce disruptive and aggressive behavior, they set the stage for positive social interactions and help create a classroom climate that facilitates learning and creative endeavors. Another goal of the proposed project concerns the upgrading of Head Start teachers' knowledge of the expressions, functions, regulation, and utilization of emotions and their relations to empathic prosocial responding and adaptive behavior. To evaluate the effectiveness of EC, we will use multiple informants (teachers, parents, children, independent observers). We will assess child temperament/emotionality and verbal ability as control measures and use multiple techniques to assess emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and adaptive and maiadaptive behavior.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project aims to increase children's understanding, regulation, and utilization of emotions. It will focus on developing and evaluating a theoretically coherent emotion-based prevention program (EBP) for children of economically disadvantaged families. It consists of two major teacher-implemented components: (1) an Emotions Course (EC) with brief lessons and activities taught on a specified schedule to the class as a whole and (2) Emotion Tutoring and Coaching (ETC) consisting of one-on-one emotion dialogues and techniques for helping a child manage on-line emotions any time she or he shows signs of under-regulated emotion or needs help in activating or sustaining positive emotions. EBP also has complementary parent component designed to extend the effects of EBP into the home. We followed differential emotions theory in translating findings from numerous laboratories on the development of emotion knowledge, emotion perception bias, and emotion regulation into a thoroughly emotion-centered prevention program. A substantial part of the empirical basis for EBP came from our own longitudinal studies of emotional development and social behavior in Head Start children. Emotion theory, emotion research, and community (Head Start staff, teacher, parent, child) feedback from preliminary implementations of EC guided development of techniques for increasing socioemotional competence and utilizing emotion motivation constructively. Such techniques and our emphasis on emotion modulation and emotion utilization represent distinctive features of EBP. Effective modulation and utilization of the emotions not only reduce disruptive and aggressive behavior, they set the stage for positive social interactions and help create a classroom climate that facilitates learning and creative endeavors. Another goal of the proposed project concerns the upgrading of Head Start teachers' knowledge of the expressions, functions, regulation, and utilization of emotions and their skills in helping children modulate and utilize on-line emotions. To evaluate the effectiveness of EBP, we will use multiple informants (teachers, parents, children, independent observers). We will assess child temperament/emotionality and verbal ability as control measures and use multiple techniques to assess emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and adaptive and maladaptive behavior.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The emotion-based prevention program (EBP), which now contains an Emotions Course for Parents as well as one for young children, is designed to increase emotion knowledge (understanding of the expressions, feeling states, and functions of emotions), emotion regulatory ability, and the adaptive use of emotion motivation. The research that led to the development of EBP showed that emotion knowledge and emotion regulation consistently related to increases in children's adaptive behavior and decreases in maladaptive behavior. The preliminary research on EBP showed that it accelerated the development of emotion knowledge. It also provided tentative evidence that emotion knowledge facilitated the development of emotion regulation. In turn, emotion competence, defined in terms of both emotion knowledge and emotion regulation, facilitated the development of social competence and a decrease in the prevalence of disruptive, aggressive, and internalizing behavior in economically disadvantaged children. Our previous research also showed that the amount of parents'participation in EBP activities contributed to its beneficial effects on their children and inspired the addition of the Emotions Course Parent to EBP. We will randomly divide Head Start Centers for an EBP-treatment and a comparison-treatment (I Can Problem Solve). The proposed research is designed to (1) strengthen and extend the existing findings on the effectiveness of EBP as a preventive intervention for inner-city Head Start children;(2) examine more thoroughly the role of emotion knowledge as a causal mechanism in the development of emotion regulation;(3) further evaluate the role of emotion competence, defined in terms of emotion knowledge and emotion regulation, as a causal factor in the development of adaptive social behavior;and (4) evaluate the role of child temperament factors, mothers'emotion competence, level of maternal depressive symptoms, and contextual risk factors (single parent status, number of residential moves, and number of changes in partners) as causal factors in the development of children's emotion competence and social behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Because our previous longitudinal studies showed that emotion knowledge is a significant predictor of academic competence (measured by both teacher ratings and child assessment), we expect EBP to improve children's performance in school as well as their emotional and social adjustment. Improvement in Head Start parents'and children's emotion competence and social functioning is expected to have beneficial effects on the behavioral aspects of mental and physical health.