
Children’s emotion perception in context: The role of caregiver touch and relationship quality.
Author(s) -
Cat Thrasher,
Tobias Großmann
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
emotion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.261
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1931-1516
pISSN - 1528-3542
DOI - 10.1037/emo0000704
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , context (archaeology) , quality (philosophy) , cognitive psychology , emotion perception , developmental psychology , social psychology , paleontology , neuroscience , biology , philosophy , epistemology
From early in development, attention to emotional facial expressions is biased toward threat. We examined whether caregiver availability affects children's emotion perception and possibly reduces threat bias. In 3 experiments, 4- and 5-year-old children were asked to detect threatening (angry) and nonthreatening (happy) facial expressions on a touch screen. Children completed the emotion detection task either with or without their caregiver sitting next to them on a bench, first using a between-subjects design where each child completed the task once (Experiment 1; N = 40) and then using a within-subjects design where each child completed the task twice (Experiment 2; N = 20). In Experiments 1 and 2, mere caregiver presence had no effect on children's emotion detection or threat bias. In Experiment 3, we increased the salience of caregiver presence by having children complete the task while holding hands with their caregiver (Experiment 3; N = 45). In dyads reporting high quality child-caregiver relationships, handholding facilitated detection of happy faces and significantly reduced children's threat bias. These findings suggest that caregiver touch impacts emotion perception in children as a function of relationship quality and that caregiver context plays a role in shaping children's responses to their social environment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).