Boone R T, Cunningham J G
Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, USA.
Dev Psychol. 1998 Sep;34(5):1007-16. doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.34.5.1007.
Little research has focused on children's decoding of emotional meaning in expressive body movement: none has considered which movement cues children use to detect emotional meaning. The current study investigated the general ability to decode happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in dance forms of expressive body movement and the specific ability to detect differences in the intensity of anger and happiness when the relative amount of movement cue specifying each emotion was systematically varied. Four-year-olds (n = 25), 5-year-olds (n = 25), 8-year-olds (n = 29), and adults (n = 24) completed an emotion contrast task and 2 emotion intensity tasks. Decoding ability exceeding chance levels was demonstrated for sadness by 4-year-olds; for sadness, fear, and happiness by 5-year-olds: and for all emotions by 8-year-olds and adults. Children as young as 5 years were shown to rely on emotion-specific movement cues in their decoding of anger and happiness intensity. The theoretical significance of these effects across development is discussed.
没有一项研究考虑过儿童使用哪些动作线索来察觉情感意义。当前的研究调查了在表达性身体动作的舞蹈形式中解码快乐、悲伤、愤怒和恐惧的一般能力，以及当明确每种情感的动作线索的相对数量被系统改变时，察觉愤怒和快乐的强度差异的特定能力。4岁儿童（n = 25）、5岁儿童（n = 25）、8岁儿童（n = 29）和成年人（n = 24）完成了一项情感对比任务和两项情感强度任务。4岁儿童在悲伤方面表现出超过随机水平的解码能力；5岁儿童在悲伤、恐惧和快乐方面表现出超过随机水平的解码能力；8岁儿童和成年人在所有情感方面都表现出超过随机水平的解码能力。研究表明，5岁的儿童在解码愤怒和快乐强度时会依赖特定于情感的动作线索。文中讨论了这些效应在整个发展过程中的理论意义。
