Individual Differences in Emotional Appraisal during Development: Analysis of the Role of Age, Gender, and Appraisal Accuracy

ABSTRACT

Emotional appraisal is the process by which different responses are generated from subjective assessments of different stimuli. Children and adults can react differently to the same stimulus. Emotional appraisal is crucial to define emotional processing and its consequent response rather than the properties of the stimulus itself. Age and gender modulate emotional appraisal during development. This study analyzed emotional appraisal in children aged 4 to 8-years-old. The children’s emotional appraisal responses and the appraisal accuracy to images with positive, negative, and neutral valence be compared between the different age groups, and according to the gender of the participants. About the appraisal accuracy, the comparisons indicated significant differences for positive and negative images according to the age of the participants, with no differences in the appraisal accuracy of neutral images. Differences in appraisal accuracy for negative images were observed between the 4-years-old group compared to the 7- and 8-years-old group, as well as in 5-years-old participants compared to 7-years-old. Significant differences were found for the positive and negative images between girls and boys, but no differences were found for neutral images. Girls had more appraisals accuracy for positive and negative images. This work highlights the importance of analyzing individual differences associated with emotional processing at different stages of development. This interrogates research findings in which emotional appraisal is carried out considering the valence assigned by adults and highlights the need for a methodological approach that includes individual differences in the appraisal of stimuli used during development.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional appraisal
• age
• gender differences
• children
• development

Author’s contributions

VVV and ER contributed to conceptualization. ER designed the experiments and general methodology. VAR, FNS, and ER collected the data. FNS, VAR, and ER worked in the data analysis, visualization and interpretation. FNS and ER wrote the manuscript. All coauthors revised and contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by CONICET, Ministry of Research (Buenos Aires City Government), and the National Fund for Scientific and Technical Research (Grant PICT 2014-3134). The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. All procedures performed were approved by the Ethics Committee of CEMIC (Protocol N° 961) and by the Responsible Conduct Committee of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires. The study was conducted following the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association and international and national child rights laws. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to permission for this was not requested in the informed consent.

Notes on contributors

Fernando Nicolás Stella

Fernando Nicolás Stella Graduate in Psychology, from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Professor. Faculty of Psychology (UBA). He was a stimulus fellow at the UBA. He participates as a collaborator in research projects related to child development.Verónica Adriana Ramírez Graduate in Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires. She is currently doing a Doctorate in Psychology at the National University of Córdoba with a CONICET scholarship. Professor of the Chair II of Statistics of the career of Psychology (UBA). Teacher of Experimental Psychology at the Faculty of Human and Behavioral Sciences (Favaloro University).Eliana Ruetti PHD in Psychology, CONICET Adjunct Researcher. Professor of Methodology of Psychological Research of UBA. Professor of Experimental Psychology at the Faculty of Human and Behavioral Sciences (Favaloro University).