Antecedents of emotion knowledge: Predictors of individual differences in young children

Abstract

Individual differences in emotion knowledge were examined among 188 4‐year‐old, predominantly African American children. Cognitive ability and negative emotionality, maternal characteristics (parenting, verbal intelligence, and depressive symptoms), environmental risk, and child sex were examined as predictors of emotion knowledge. Regression analyses indicated that cognitively skilled children who resided in relatively low risk environments with verbally intelligent mothers possessed greater emotion knowledge. Proximal (4‐year) child cognitive ability was a stronger predictor than distal (2‐year) cognitive ability. Positive parenting at 4 years was correlated with child emotion knowledge, but this relation disappeared when parenting was examined in the context of other predictors. These findings highlight the potential role of child cognitive ability, along with environmental risk and maternal verbal intelligence, in children's emotion knowledge and demonstrate the importance of examining a variety of predictors for their unique contribution to emotion knowledge.

Notes

Correspondence should be addressed to David S. Bennett, Drexel University College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Friends Hospital, 4641 Roosevelt Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19129, USA; e‐mail: [email protected]

This study was supported by Grant DA07109 to Michael Lewis from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The authors gratefully acknowledge Linda Camras for providing the photographs used in the assessment of emotion knowledge. An earlier report of this data was presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (April 2003) in Tampa, Florida.

Details of all factor analyses are available from the authors.

Existing research (e.g., Kaugars, Russ, & Singer, 2001) does not provide any reason to examine neonatal health or cocaine exposure as predictors of emotion knowledge, and when added to the hierarchical regressions no effects were found.