A developmental study on children's understanding of emotion and emotional self-control

The present study examined how children understand the processes concerning the strategic control of emotion. There are five components of this emergent metaemotive understanding: the children's knowledge of (1) the cues for identifying emotions, (2) the antecedents of emotions, (3) display rules, (4) the consequence of an emotional response, and (5) the strategies of emotional self-control. Five, seven and nine-year-old children were interviewed regarding their knowledge of these components. The following results were obtained. For identifying emotion, seven-year-olds tended to focus on the situational cues. Nine-year-olds were more likely to focus on the mental cues. The frequency of spontaneous usage of display rules increased with age. Nine-year-olds mentioned the cognitive self-control strategies such as re-directing their thoughts. The results were discussed in terms of developmental perspectives.