The expression, understanding, and regulation of affect constitute the domain of emotional competence." This is among the most intensively studied in the recent history of developmental science. To date, most efforts have been devoted to identifying and understanding mechanisms associated with emotion regulation. However, research on emotion regulationhas typically considered only the negative pole of emotion (e.g., anger, fear, sadness, envy) and has yet to address questions about the consequences of positive affect experiences. Recent reviews of literature with adults have shown meaningful associations between experiences of positive emotion (e.g., happiness, joy) and numerous indicators of life success. This project bridges findings on the consequences of emotion/affect expression from developmental science and findings from research on positive psychology with adults. The study employs a multi-cohort longitudinal design, such that with a new cohort of preschool children will begin the study in each consecutive year of funding, and children recruited from a broad range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. The PI will determine the period at which both positive and negative affect expressiveness become stable and the range of emotional competence, behavioral competence, and social competence correlates that can be predicted from positive and negative emotion expressiveness. Observational data on affect expression, social competence, and spontaneous use of math and science curriculum materials during free play will be obtained in classrooms and during dyadic peer interactions. Further, mothers and children will be observed during play, teaching, book-reading, memory reminiscences, and self-control tasks to assess situational constraints on the expression of affect. The data will be used to test hypotheses about the developmental (e.g., intensity of expression will increase over the preschool period), categorical (e.g., the suite of correlates for indicators of positive and negative affect expression will be distinct or overlap only partially), and individual difference in outcomes (e.g., children who characteristically express positive affect will be absent from class less than children who less characteristically express positive affect.
The project's emphasis on the expression of positive and negative affect provide an alternative and novel approach to the study of children's emotion. The project is noteworthy not only for this reason, but also because its sophisticated methodology and developmental design and because it forges a bridge between theories of children's emotional development and the positive psychology perspective that has recently gained prominence in studies of adults. In addition, the longitudinal dataset will allow the PI to test hypotheses concerning causal relations between the experience of positive (and negative) affects and social outcomes (social behavior, social competence, emotional competence) measured in subsequent years. The overarching goal of the project is to provide a comprehensive characterization of the roles played by positive and negative affects in the lives of preschool children. Support for the hypotheses tested could set the stage for preschool curriculum development geared toward promoting the experience and expression of positive affect . Parent education could also benefit from the findings: Support for the project's hypotheses would imply that parents be educated first in their roles as children's first caregivers and then in their roles as teachers who model positive affect and reinforce child expressions of positive affect.
