The development of concepts of simultaneity in children's understanding of emotions.
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.
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D013997:Time Factors