This study examines contributions of ethnicity and social experience to the development of crosscultural differences in emotion communication and to performance on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Three groups of 3-year-old children and their mothers will participate: a) Chinese children adopted by European-American [E-A] families, b) nonadopted E-A children, and c) nonadopted immigrant Chinese-American [C-A] children. Children will be videotaped as they respond to emotion-eliciting pictures of positive, negative, and unusual stimuli, as they respond to a sensory stimulus (sour odor) and during several Bayley Scale items. Mothers will provide information about parenting attitudes, expressive style, family demographics, their child's medical history and childcare experiences. Children's facial expressions will be coded in detail. In addition, their mothers will ability to """"""""read"""""""" their children's facial expressions will be assessed. Data analyses will examine several questions: 1) Will the adopted-Chinese, Chinese-American and European-American children differ in their facial expressivity at 3 years of age?, 2) Will adopted-Chinese, Chinese-American and European-American children score differently on the Bayley Mental and/or Motor Development Scales?, 3) Will mothers of the adopted- Chinese, Chinese-American, and European-American children differ in their parenting attitudes and maternal expressiveness?, 4) Are group differences in facial expressivity related to developmental status (as assessed by the Bayley Scales), maternal expressiveness, maternal childrearing attitudes, and/or other demographic, medical, and psychosocial variables?, and 5) Will mothers of the adopted-Chinese, Chinese-American, and European-American children differ in their ability to make accurate judgments based on their child's facial responses? We hypothesize E-A children and C-A children will differ in expressivity but that differences between the adopted Chinese infants and the E-A infants will be minimal by 3 years of age. Such findings would indicate that family expressiveness is highly influential in determining expressive behavior while ethnicity is of less importance. The results of this investigation will provide vital information to researchers, pediatricians, and mothers about emotion communication with adopted and nonadopted children from different cultural backgrounds.
