Premium
Inferring Beliefs and Desires From Emotional Reactions to Anticipated and Observed Events
Author(s) -
Wu Yang,
Schulz Laura E.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12759
Subject(s) - psychology , valence (chemistry) , theory of mind , developmental psychology , facial expression , emotional valence , character (mathematics) , dynamics (music) , social psychology , emotional expression , cognition , cognitive psychology , communication , pedagogy , physics , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Researchers have long been interested in the relation between emotion understanding and theory of mind. This study investigates a cue to mental states that has rarely been investigated: the dynamics of valenced emotional expressions. When the valence of a character's facial expression was stable between an expected and observed outcome, children ( N = 122; M = 5.0 years) recovered the character's desires but did not consistently recover her beliefs. When the valence changed, older but not younger children recovered both the characters’ beliefs and desires. In contrast, adults jointly recovered agents’ beliefs and desires in all conditions. These results suggest that the ability to infer mental states from the dynamics of emotional expressions develops gradually through early and middle childhood.