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THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTS OF SIMULTANEITY IN CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF EMOTIONS
Author(s) -
Reissland Nadja
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1985.tb00594.x
Subject(s) - psychology , anger , ambivalence , happiness , developmental psychology , simultaneity , valence (chemistry) , child development , social psychology , cognitive psychology , physics , classical mechanics , quantum mechanics
Abstract The development of children's understanding of simultaneously occurring emotions was investigated. A developmental progression was found in their giving examples of ambivalent situations (e.g. characterised by both happiness and anger); and in their descriptions of situations. The youngest children (mean age = 5.8) gave as examples of ambivalence two unrelated events associated with different emotions. At the next stage children (mean age = 7.0) were able to connect sequentially two events. At a third stage (mean age = 10.1) the children were able to conceive of situations in which two emotions of opposite valence occurred simultaneously.