Individual and socioenvironmental differences in autobiographical emotional appraisal of preschoolers

Highlights

• Children’s appraisal of autobiographical events differs from those of their families.

• Older children present more accuracy appraisal in emotional events.

• Greater appraisal accuracy was observed in the favorable condition.

• Appraisal accuracy was greater for emotional than for neutral ones.

Abstract

Emotions are essential processes for integrating events into autobiographical memory. Different children react differently to the same event. The process through which these different responses are generated from subjective evaluations of an event is called emotional appraisal. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the variations in the emotional appraisal of autobiographical events of 4- and 5-year-old children from homes with different socioenvironmental conditions. We compared preschoolers’ emotional appraisal responses with those of their families. The emotional accuracy of the preschoolers was found to differ according to the different socioenvironmental conditions of their homes. Greater appraisal accuracy was observed in the favorable condition, and it was greater for emotional events than for neutral events. Appraisal accuracy also differed with age, with 5-year-olds showing greater appraisal accuracy than 4-year-olds. Therefore, the emotional appraisal of these events may also be affected by age and valence when attributing emotions to personal experiences.

Introduction

Emotions are essential processes for integrating events into autobiographical memory (Fivush and Grysman, 2019, Wang, 2008). This means that the events that take place in daily life are integrated into the autobiographical memory, which includes the thoughts and emotions that emerge from the appraisal of these experiences (Fivush et al., 2011, Fivush and Waters, 2019, Kuppens et al., 2012). Such memory is indispensable for the development of identity processes and psychological well-being (Wang, Hutt, Kulkofsky, McDermott, & Wei, 2006) as well as for the continuity and coherence of one's history (Fivush, 2011, Fivush and Waters, 2019). During preschool age, the stage at which this memory develops, adults help to assess and organize experiences through retelling about such ordinary events with different emotional content (Fivush, 2011, Merrill et al., 2018).

Several studies found that children whose families discuss emotional experiences more openly and coherently develop better social skills, more positive relationships with their caregivers, better psychological well-being, a greater understanding of emotions, and better functioning of the immune system (Fivush and Waters, 2019, Freda and Martino, 2015, Waters and Fivush, 2015; see Fivush, 2019, for a review). These interactions are proposed as the foundations of the autobiographical consciousness, which is defined as the integration of a subjective perspective within an extended narrative framework, mediated through language (Nelson & Fivush, 2019).

The literature describes a chronological coincidence between the development of knowledge about emotions and that of autobiographical memory (Channell & Barth, 2013). From 2 years of age, children can associate emotions, such as fear and pleasure, with various episodes only by differentiating between positive and negative content (Parsafar and Davis, 2018, Wang, 2008). Some research on preschoolers elucidated the relationships between this emotion knowledge and other cognitive functions. Emotion knowledge is a set of skills that includes understanding different emotional states, representing them with words, and recognizing the emotional states in others and the feelings associated with different situations (Channell and Barth, 2013, Fidalgo et al., 2018). Similarly, Van Bergen, Wall, and Salmon (2015) described how children’s memories about daily experiences with different valences help them to know and understand their emotions and those of others, resulting in higher levels of regulation and emotional well-being. Therefore, emotion knowledge includes processes such as appraisal stimuli, emotional comprehension and expression, and information retrieval to be integrated into memory. In the literature, these processes are not necessarily distinguished separately, but the emphasis placed on one or another varies depending on the objectives of each study.

Different children react differently to the same event, and the process through which these different responses are generated from the subjective evaluations of an event is called emotional appraisal (Kuppens et al., 2012, Moors, 2017, Moors and Scherer, 2013, Nieto and Delgado, 2006, Scherer and Fontaine, 2018). These variations in emotional and behavioral responses could be due to the influence of individual aspects, such as age, gender, temperament, and language, and/or the influence of socioenvironmental aspects, such as the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the family context (Chaplin et al., 2017, Fidalgo et al., 2018, Fivush and Grysman, 2019, Koelsch et al., 2015, Wang, 2008).

Emotional appraisal is involved in the retrieval of autobiographical memories. The development of this memory is influenced by sociocultural and cognitive factors from 1 to 5 years of age (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). From 3 years of age onward, it gradually develops through processes of social interaction and cognitive development of basic memory, language, understanding of temporal relationships, narrative skills, and self-awareness (Fivush, 2011, Nelson and Fivush, 2004, Nieto et al., 2018). Research conducted with preschoolers finds that the specificity of autobiographical memory is positively associated with age (McDonnell et al., 2016, Nieto et al., 2017, Nuttall et al., 2014). On the other hand, children's sociocultural context also influences the specificity of autobiographical memory. In this sense, the individualistic orientation of Western cultures (e.g., North America, Europe) and the collectivist orientation of Eastern cultures (e.g., China, Japan) are associated with accessibility, style, specificity, and the content of the autobiographical memory (Fivush, 2014, Howe, 2014, Wang, 2006).

The influence of age, gender, and/or other individual characteristics on emotional appraisal was investigated in various studies (Nelson and Russell, 2016a, Nelson and Russell, 2016b, Parsafar and Davis, 2018, Sánchez Beisel and Ruetti, 2017, Smith et al., 2015). For example, one study analyzed the emotional appraisal of visual stimuli with different valences (negative, neutral, and positive) in 4- and 5-year-old children (Jaume, Ruetti, Segretin, & Lipina, 2017). In this study, the emotional appraisal varied according to age and the valence of the stimuli, finding greater accuracy on positive images at 5 years than at 4 years of age, but not on the other valences. In a previous study conducted with these participants, we found that appraisal in 4-year-olds did not coincide with task appraisal and that 5-year-olds showed greater accuracy appraisal. This differential accuracy is presented in the appraisal of positive visual images. However, the accuracy appraisal did not vary concerning gender, socioenvironmental conditions, or language ability (Ruetti, Segretin, Ramírez, & Lipina, 2019).

Gender narratives are socialized early in development and lead to gender differences in the emotional aspects of narrative recall. Although at the beginning of parent–child memories there are no differences between the memory reports of daughters and sons, at 4 years of age to adulthood girls or women tell more emotionally elaborate autobiographical narratives than boys or men. Besides, memory guided by parents can facilitate the socialization of a gender narrative style that follows cultural stereotypes and emphasizes emotional expressions for girls rather than boys (Grysman, Merrill, & Fivush, 2017). Other studies also found gender differences in the narratives of the childreńs personal experiences, with those of girls tending to be more abundant and detailed than those of boys (Fivush, 2014; Fivush and Zaman, 2013, Grysman et al., 2017, Merrill et al., 2015).

The literature explores separately the role of individual and contextual variations in preschoolers’ emotional appraisal, and no information is available on how adverse socioenvironmental conditions could affect these responses. However, there is evidence about the relationship between emotion knowledge (within which emotional appraisal is located) and socioeconomic indicators. On the one hand, studies found that higher family risk, which included indicators such as instability, stress, and a low socioeconomic level, predicts lower emotion knowledge. Preschoolers attending public schools from families whose maternal education was relatively low (secondary schooling) had less emotion knowledge compared with preschoolers attending private schools and whose mothers had a higher level of education (Denham et al., 2012). On the other hand, when analyzing contextual risk through indicators such as maternal stress, social support, household characteristics, indicators of instability, maternal education, and receipt of public assistance, an inverse relationship was also found between these indicators and emotion knowledge in 4-year-old children (Bennett, Bendersky, & Lewis, 2005). A relationship was also found between the more traditional indicators of socioeconomic level (income, education, and occupation) and emotion knowledge during development. Using maternal education and income as indicators of the socioeconomic level of the home, a positive association was found with the emotion knowledge of preschoolers (Smith & Walden, 1998). When considering parental education as an indicator of socioeconomic status, it was also found that greater emotion knowledge of preschoolers was associated with greater parental education (Cutting and Dunn, 1999, Denham et al., 2015).

Although there are works that analyzed the influence of individual and socioenvironmental factors on the development of autobiographical memory, there are no antecedents that explored the role of these factors in the emotional appraisal of personal events. Therefore, the main objective of the current study was to analyze the variations in the autobiographical emotional appraisal of 4- and 5-year-old children from homes with favorable and unfavorable socioenvironmental conditions. Taking into account the foregoing, children were expected to present variations in emotional appraisal based on the valence of the events and the age and gender of the participants. Specifically, it was expected that children value positive, negative, and neutral events as such and that there would be more variability in the responses of 4-year-olds than in those of 5-year-olds. On the other hand, girls were expected to present greater appraisal responses to positive and negative events compared with boys. The meaning of variations in emotional appraisal based on socioenvironmental conditions is explored. Regarding the accuracy appraisal, there is not enough information to advance hypotheses. However, it was expected that differences would be found between parents' and children's emotional appraisal, because emotional categories and processes are in development at 4 and 5 years of age.