Children's Behavioural Reactions in Situations with a Dual Emotional Impact

Six-yr.-old children d o not think it possible to feel more than one emotion simultaneously. Ten-yr.-olds, o n the other hand, have no difficulty acknowledging the existence of such (conflicting) emotions (Meerum Terwogt, Koops, Oosterhoff, 6: Olthof, 1986; Olthof, Meerum Terwogt, van Eck, & Koops, 1987). By studying the consequences of conflicting stimuli on actual behaviour, an attempt was made to establish whether the opinion of 6-yr.-olds reflects an unawareness of their own emotional states or whether this opinion originates from emotional functioning which is different from that of 10-yr.-olds. Sixty 6-yr.-olds and sixty 10-yr.-olds took part in a shooting game, in which success and failure (hits and misses) could be manipulated by the experimenter. After a period of reasonable success, a negative emotion was induced by continuous failure. From this moment on, resistance to frustration was measured by the number of misses before quitting (which the children could do at any time). Given the procedure of shooting in fixed intervals, this measure also reflects the time spent in the game. Both age groups were assigned to one of three conditions of 2 0 children each: a control group and two groups also receiving a positive incentive supposed to enlarge their frusrration tolerance. These groups were allowed to eat as much as they wanted of a favorite snack during the game, with the restriction that consumption took place either just before (successive condition) or during (simultaneous condition) the series of misses. Mean numbers of misses accepted before quitting for three conditions by age are given in tile table. A n age x condition X sex analysis of variance showed a main effect of condition ( F 2 . 1 ~ = 5.56, p < .01. Post hoc analysis (Duncan's multiple-range resr, p = .05) showed that 10-yr.-olds persisted longer i n both experimental conditions than the control group, whereas the 6-yr.-olds only persisted longer in the simultaneous condition

Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Dual (grammatical number · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Child and Animal Learning Development · Early Childhood Education and Development · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Development in Processing of Multiple Emotional Situations

  Mark Meerum Terwogt, Willem Koops et al.•The Journal of General Psychology•1986

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