Simmons College, Boston, MA, USA.
Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 2010 Feb;41(1):30-46. doi: 10.1007/s10578-009-0153-x. Epub 2009 Jul 25.
This study examined emotion perception processes in preschool aged children presenting with clinically significant emotional and behavior problems, with emphasis on sadness perception accuracy (i.e., the ability to correctly identify sadness from expressive and situational cues) and anger perception bias (i.e., the tendency to perceive anger in the absence of concordant cues) as related to children's externalizing symptoms. Participants were 82 children (3-5 years of age) admitted to a psychiatric day treatment program. Children participated in a structured puppet play activity to assess emotion understanding. Mothers reported on children's externalizing symptoms and program staff reported on children's emotion regulation and negative emotional lability. Young children in this clinical sample demonstrated generally age-appropriate ability to identify basic emotions as expressed within prototypical social situations. Most emotion perception errors involved the over-identification of sadness. Children's decreased accuracy in sadness perception was associated with increased externalizing symptoms. Children's negative emotional lability contributed unique variance to the prediction of externalizing symptoms, with more labile children also demonstrating increased symptoms. Results underscore the role of emotion processes in early childhood mental health problems, with implications for emotion-based treatments of early externalizing behavior symptoms.
本研究考察了具有临床显著情绪和行为问题的学龄前儿童的情绪感知过程，重点关注悲伤感知准确性（即正确识别表达和情境线索中的悲伤的能力）和愤怒感知偏差（即缺乏一致线索时感知愤怒的倾向）与儿童的外化症状的关系。参与者为 82 名（3-5 岁）被送入精神病日治疗计划的儿童。儿童参与了一项结构化的木偶戏活动，以评估情绪理解。母亲报告了儿童的外化症状，而项目工作人员报告了儿童的情绪调节和负性情绪不稳定性。这个临床样本中的幼儿表现出了普遍适合年龄的能力，能够识别出典型社会情境中表达的基本情绪。大多数情绪感知错误涉及对悲伤的过度识别。儿童在悲伤感知方面的准确性下降与外化症状的增加有关。儿童的负性情绪不稳定性对外化症状的预测有独特的影响，情绪更不稳定的儿童也表现出更多的症状。研究结果强调了情绪过程在儿童早期心理健康问题中的作用，对基于情绪的早期外化行为症状治疗具有启示意义。
