PRESCHOOLERS' AFFECT AND COGNITION ABOUT CHALLENGING PEER SITUATIONS

A pictorial forced-choice measure was developed to examine preschoolers' affective and behavioral responses to three potentially problematic peer situations (Challenging Situations Task; CST). Children's choices of affective and behavioral responses were expected to predict evaluations of their social competence. Moreover, it was expected that these choices would be predicted by children's predominant affect in the preschool and their understanding of emotions in general. Twenty-eight preschoolers (mean age = 58 months) completed the CST and an emotional expression and situation identification task. Their emotional displays were observed in the preschool; teachers completed the Behar Problem Behavior Questionnaire, and peers rated their likability. Results supported a model of social competence: Expressed emotions and understanding of emotions influence social cognition about affective and behavioral aspects of developmentally important peer situations. Social cognitions about these situations predicted evaluations of children's social competence.

Social cognitions about peer interaction mediate children's actions in potentially problematic peer situations (Dodge, Pettit, McClaskey, & Brown, 1986). Presumably, three social cognitive steps precede peer behavior: children encode and interpret a given experience, and then reflect on choices of behavioral strategies or solutions. Last, they finally enact their chosen behavior (see Dodge et al., 1986).

The quality of social cognitive solutions generated in response to hypothetical peer challenges predicts success with peers (Rubin & Daniels-Beirness, 1983; Rubin, Daniels-Beirness, & Havren, 1982; Sharp, 1981). For example, Rubin, Daniels-Beirness, and Hayvren (1982) reported that children who more often generated prosocial solutions to property disputes were more well liked than children who generated agonistic solutions.

Thus, one of this study's main purposes was to investigate the relation between preschoolers' choices of specific behavioral strategies during pictorially depicted peer situations and their social competence in the preschool classroom, as evaluated by teachers and peers. Specifically, it was expected that children who chose prosocial alternatives for responding to challenging peer situations would be evaluated more favorably by both their teachers and peers. In contrast, children who chose more aggressive, manipulative, or avoidant alternatives were expected-to be seen as less socially adjusted in the classroom (Rubin et al., 1982).

As important as social cognition is, it cannot be divorced from affect: Together, they mediate behavior towards peers (Gottman, 1986; Hoffman, 1981). Thus, affect occurring during encoding of problematic peer situations could influence the choice of behavioral strategies which in turn lead to enacted behavior (Hoffman, 1981; Kosslyn & Kagan, 1981). Affect may enable or disable the social cognitive processing necessary to produce high quality solutions for enactment in actual social situations (see Hoffman, 1975). For example, it was predicted that children who reported anger in these peer situations would also more often choose aggressive behavioral strategies, and less often choose prosocial strategies. Further, children who admitted the distress inherent in these challenging situations (i.e., who reported that they would be sad in such situations) were predicted to more often choose prosocial strategies, and less often choose aggressive ones.

Thus, another major purpose of this study was the investigation of preschoolers' self-reported affect during pictorially depicted peer situations, and its relation to their choices of behavioral strategies. Correlations between chosen affect and evaluations of actual social behavior were also predicted (e.g., angry choices would be related to negative evaluations of social competence).

Children's choice of behavioral strategies and concomitant affect during challenging peer situations are likely to be supported by their own prevalent affect and their understanding of emotions. That is, individual differences in enduring emotions and in the social cognition of emotions may be seen as intrapersonal forces which predict these mediators of behaviors towards peers.

For example, previous research has shown that children's persistent patterns of affective expressiveness are related to social cognitive abilities (Denham, 1986). Thus, it was expected that more positive children would choose more prosocial, and fewer aggressive, behavioral strategies in the situations depicted for them. They would be less preoccupied with. their own needs during peer situations, and more able to mobilize socially competent responses (see also Hoffman, 1975). Because their general positivity allowed them to accurately reflect on the emotions inherent in challenging peer situations, it also was expected that such children would report feeling sad, rather than happy or angry, during such situations. They would be more able to admit that the situations were potentially conflictual, as indexed by their choice of sadness, than children showing more sadness and anger in the preschool classroom.

Similarly, children who better understood others' emotions would more likely choose prosocial, rather than aggressive, solutions as responses to the challenging peer situations. They would be more able to see both points of view in the situation (see also Denham, 1986; Denham, McKinley, Couchoud, & Holt, 1990, for positive relation between observed prosocial behavior and understanding of emotion).

This study's overarching goal was to evaluate a model of preschoolers' social competence, incorporating affect, social cognition, and behavior. Its specific goals were: (a) to explore the linkage between children's predictions of affect and behavior in such situations; (b) to substantiate that observed affect and knowledge of emotion support this social cognition; and, finally, (c) to demonstrate that this social cognition about affective and behavioral choices in trying peer situations is, in fact, related to both teacher and peer assessments of social-emotional competence.

Method

Subjects

Subjects were 28 preschool children, with mean age of 58 months (range = 47 to 69 months); they attended two classes of a university laboratory preschool. All but one of the children were Caucasian; almost all were middle- to upper-middle socioeconomic strata. There were 14 males and 14 females.

Measures

Challenging Situations Task (CST). This measure was designed to assess children's affective and behavioral responses to hypothetical peer situations. A challenging situation was defined as one which would elicit affect and test the limits of the child's behavioral abilities within the crucial peer relationship.

Categories of peer provocation and entry into a peer group are difficult encounters which differentiate preschoolers and school-aged children who differ in social competence (Dodge, McClaskey, and Feldman, 1985; see also the enumerations of parents, preschool teachers, and clinical and developmental psychologists for the current study, Bouril, 1988). The three situations chosen for inclusion in the CST were: (a) a peer knocking down a tower of blocks which the child was building; (b) being hit by a peer on the playground; and (c) entering a group of peers playing a game.

Four categories of affective responses (i.e., happy, sad, angry, and neutral or "just okay"), and four categories of behavioral responses (i.e., prosocial, aggressive, manipulative, and avoidant) were identified for each situation. Prosocial responses included engaging the other person in constructive play, not becoming upset, and discussing the problem. Aggressive responses included yelling, hitting the other person, or destroying the peers' game. Crying and/or pouting were manipulative responses. Avoidant responses were ignoring the other person, withdrawing from the interaction, or waiting on the sidelines (see Appendix).

The child was instructed to pretend that he or she was in that situation and to respond to questions as if it were a real situation for them. The instrument's pictorial format was similar to that described by Harter and Pike (1984) for the Perceived Competence Scale for Children. Thus, the tester first presented a 3x4 inch (7.6 x 10.2 cm) picture and verbal description of each challenging situation.

Following this presentation of each challenging situation, four pictures of happy, sad, angry, and neutral affect were presented in random order and labelled for the child. Then the child was asked to point to the picture which best described the answer to "How do you feel when [this situation] happens to you?"

Next, four pictures of behavioral responses (prosocial, aggressive, manipulation of others' feelings, and avoidant) were presented in random order and the child was asked, "what do you do when you feel that way [in this situation]?" After the child responded, the three unselected behavioral choice pictures were removed. Scores for affective and behavioral responses used were number of times each affect and each behavioral response was chosen by each child, across the three situations.

Observed emotions. Three female undergraduate students, who were blind to the study's hypotheses and results on any other measure, observed the childen's emotions in the classroom. Each worked from a randomly ordered roster for each class, observing focal children in turn for 5-minute periods (these periods were calculated via stopwatch; if a focal subject left the free play area for any reason, such as entering the restroom, sitting down for snack, or leaving for the playground, the actual amount of observation time was recorded). Observers continued through the random roster, skipping absent pupils, marking the child to be observed first on the next day when they concluded observing for the day. In this manner, children were observed for an mean total of 39.94 minutes, or approximately seven observation periods (SD = 17.34 minutes), over an average of 7.46 days (SD = 3.06 days). The measures used in subsequent analyses were the rates per minute of happiness, sadness, anger, and total emotion expressiveness (also including fear, pain, and "other").

Emotion displays were operationally defined according to broad facial, vocal, and motor indices that captured their social meaning (see also Campos & Barrett, 1987). For example, happiness was indexed by smiles, singing, laughter, or voices with "pearly," relaxed pitch. Sadness, in contrast, was marked by hypotonicity, possibly crying, inner corners of eyebrows lifted and corners of lips down, and slow, steady-pitched speech. Anger was evidenced behaviorally by throwing, pushing, hitting, facially by brows shoved down, tense lower lips, staring; speech was clipped, abrupt, possibly yelling.

A fourth observer (the first author) coded a subset of observation periods at the beginning, middle, and end of the 6-month period of observation. For the entire emotion coding system, the mean percentage agreement across observers was 81%; the mean kappa for the system was .68; percentage agreements for happiness, sadness, and anger were 82%, 81%, and 78%, respectively.

Understanding of emotion expressions and situations. A familiar adult female administered the measures of emotion understanding in a quiet room of the subjects' preschool. First, emotion expression labeling was assessed. Happy, sad, angry, and fearful expressions (from Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1980) were drawn on four flannel faces. Children examined these faces and were first asked to identify them verbally, by naming them. Next, the examiner shuffled the faces and asked "Where is the -- --- face?" for each of the four emotions. The subjects were required to respond to each question nonverbally, by pointing.

Emotion situation knowledge was next assessed via two tasks, one of unequivocal emotional situations, and one of equivocal emotional situations. The first task explored children's knowledge of others' feelings in situations that elicit unequivocal emotional reactions, such as happiness at being given an ice cream cone, or fear at having a nightmare (Borke, 1971; Denham, 1986). For this task, puppets enacted eight vignettes, accompanied by the puppeteer's standardized vocal and visual emotion cues (patterned after Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1980). The second task of equivocal emotion situations measured how well children could identify others' feelings which differed from their own. Mothers reported the subjects' feelings in 12 common situations which could reasonably elicit two basic emotions. For example, mothers were asked whether their child would be happy or sad to come to preschool. In the 12 vignettes, maternal reports determined the protagonist puppet's emotions. That is, the puppeteer portrayed the emotion which the subject's mother had not selected. For example, if mother had indicated that the child would be happy to come to preschool, the puppet would be sad; if mother had indicated that the child would be sad if left at home during a family outing, the puppet would be angry (see also Denham, 1986, and Denham & Couchoud, 1990).

After each of the 20 vignettes, children were asked how the puppet felt. They then affixed to the puppet one of the four flannel faces used in the expression labeling task. The protagonist puppet was the same gender as the subject. For each of the three tasks, subjects received 2 points for a correct answer, 1 point for correctly specifying only the emotion's valence (e.g., choosing the sad instead of the angry face). The emotion knowledge aggregate equalled the sum of standardized scores on each of the vignettes and expression identification items; Cronbach's alpha equalled .83.

Sociometric rating. Children were administered an adaptation of a reliable and valid preschool sociometric rating measure (Asher, Singleton, Tinsley, & Hymel, 1979; Hymel, 1983). They named photographs of their peers to ensure recognition. They then rated these peers by inserting photographs of classmates into boxes on which drawings of happy, sad, and neutral faces were affixed. They inserted a photo into the happy face box if they liked the peer a lot, in the neutral face box if they kinda liked the peer, and in the sad face box if they did not like the peer.

The methodology of Asher et al. (1979) was modified to include a tutorial session in which the experimenter demonstrated the task before requiring the child to make ratings. Ample facial and vocal cues of emotion were displayed by the tester while she placed Fisher-Price "people" in the boxes. The index of likability used in subsequent analyses equalled the mean of the following weighted sum: (3 * the number of like ratings) + (2 * the number of kinda like ratings) + (the number of don't like ratings) from all participating classmates.

Teacher ratings. Teachers were trained to complete the Preschool Problem Behavior Questionnaire (PPBQ; Behar & Stringfield, 1974). Well-validated scales for aggression and miserable/fearfulness were used; higher scores denote maladjustment (Hoge, Meginbir, Khan, & Weatherall, 1985; Rubin & Clark, 1983). For the aggression scale, the teacher gives each child a rating from 0 to 2 on seven items: inconsiderate, destroys property, bullies other children, fights, kicks, does not share, and blames others. For the miserable/fearfulness scale, the teacher gives each child a rating from 0 to 2 on five items: fearful, miserable, stares, cries, and gives up.

Results

Goal One: Relations Among Affective and Behavioral Choices

Descriptive data for all variables are shown in Table 1. Sufficient variation occurred to warrant correlational analyses. There also were interesting predominant affective and behavioral choices for the CST's challenging peer situations: sad affect and prosocial behaviors.

Intercorrelations among the Challenging Situation Task variables are shown in Table 2. Children who more often picked sadness as their affective response tended to pick prosocial behavioral responses (p < .07). In contrast, they were less likely to pick angry affective and aggressive behavioral responses.

Children who more often picked anger as their affective response were likely to pick aggression, but not prosocial behavior, as their behavioral response. Choice of neutral affective responses was marginally negatively related to choice of happy affective responses (p < .07), but positively associated with choice of manipulative behavioral strategies. Children who more often chose prosocial behavioral responses were less likely to choose aggressive or avoidant behavioral responses.

Goal Two: CST's Relations With Predominant Affect and Understanding of Emotion

Intercorrelations of CST variables with observed emotions and emotion labeling and situation knowledge are shown in Table 3. Children who more often chose sad affective responses or prosocial behavioral responses to the three peer situations were likely to show happiness and to be emotionally expressive in the preschool classroom (i.e., they displayed more emotions per minute). Those who more often chose angry responses were less likely to be expressive in the preschool classroom. Moreover, children who more often chose happy affective responses were less able to label emotional expressions, r (26) = -.51, p < .025.

Children who chose prosocial behavioral responses on the CST also scored higher on emotion knowledge. In contrast, children who more often picked aggressive behavioral responses were less likely to show happiness in the preschool classroom.

Goal Three: CST's Relations With Teachers' and Peers' Evaluations of Social Competence

Intercorrelations of CST variables with teacher and peer evaluations of social competence are shown in Table 3. Children who more often chose sad affective responses were less likely to be rated as Miserable/Fearful by their teacher, whereas those who more often picked angry affective responses were more likely to be rated as Miserable/Fearful. Children who more often chose prosocial behavioral responses were rated as more likable by peers, and as less Miserable/Fearful by teachers. In contrast, children who more often picked aggressive behavioral responses were rated as less likable by peers. Children who more often said they would cry or pout (i.e., made manipulative behavioral choices) or made avoidant behavioral choices, were more likely to be rated as Miserable/Fearful by teachers.

In an effort to examine the complex paths from affective to behavioral choice, indices of subjects' linkage of affective and behavioral choices also were created. For example, a prosocial linkage variable was created which equalled the total number of sad affective choices which were followed by prosocial behavioral choices. Children who scored higher on this linkage variable showed more happiness in preschool, and were more emotionally expressive, r s (26) = .49 and .56, p s < .05 and .01, respectively. They were also more well-liked and scored lower on Miserable/Fearful ratings, rs = .40 and -.54, p s < .05 and .01, respectively.

An aggressive linkage variable was created which equalled the total number of angry affective choices which were followed by aggressive behavioral choices. Children who scored higher on this aggregate were less likely to show happiness or be emotionally expressive overall in the preschool classroom, r s (26) = -.39 and - .38, p s < .05.

In order to best summarize the observed pattern of covariation among these variables, a series of regression analyses also was conducted to test the predictive pathways displayed in Figure 1 through Figure 4. Happiness observed in the preschool was allowed to predict emotions reported on the CST (sadness and anger), and emotion knowledge was allowed to predict behavioral strategies reported on the CST (prosocial and aggressive). Sociometric ratings and teacher ratings of sadness (PPBQ) were predicted by these behavioral strategies.

The results of these regression analyses (as indicated by significant betas in the figures) suggest that the most successful models incorporating affect, social cognition, and behavior are the prediction of sociometric or sadness ratings from observed happiness, emotion knowledge, and CST sadness and prosocial strategies (see Figures 1 and 2).

In Figure 3, although CST anger and aggressive strategies also predict sociometric ratings, observed happiness and emotion knowledge do not predict these aspects of social competence. The model further breaks down when predicting the less global teacher rating of sadness; CST aggressive strategies do not predict teacher rated sadness (see Figure 4).

Discussion

Acquiring skill with peers is a major developmental task during the early childhood period; children must learn to manage their emotional arousal, and to maintain behavioral organization despite this arousal, during peer interaction (Parker & Gottman, 1989; Waters & Sroufe, 1983). Because of the duality of this developmental task, affective as well as behavioral choices were included in the CST.

Thus, an attempt was made to demonstrate young children's coherent, organized social cognition about both aspects of taxing peer situations. In our study, the difficult task of self disclosure was made easier for preschoolers by allowing them to choose among pictorial depictions of emotions, which most could differentiate (see Denham & Couchoud, 1990; cf. Cole, 1986).

Regarding the model of social competence proposed here, children's chosen emotional responses were often related to their chosen behavioral responses. These preschoolers already were exhibiting a linkage between their anger and their aggression (Averill, 1982), and between their distress and their prosocial behavior (Barnett, King, & Howard, 1979); they appeared aware that their emotions could either enable or disable prosocial behavior (see also Denham, 1986).

The children's predominant affective choice, sadness, also deserves comment. Earlier research has shown that, for preschoolers, the emotional label sad can denote sadness, distress, a general feeling "bad" (Denham & Couchoud, 1990); children may have used the affective choice of sadness to denote almost a moral concern about problematic peer situations.

Personal styles in these affective and behavioral choices also emerged, that is, children who chose sad affective responses were unlikely to choose angry affective responses, and those who chose prosocial behavioral responses were unlikely to choose either aggressive or avoidant responses. Thus, the goal of demonstrating organized behavioral and affective aspects of preschoolers' thinking about peer situations was met.

Results also supported other aspects of the model of social competence in preschool: emotion, both through expressed emotions and understanding of emotions, and predicted social cognition about developmentally important peer situations. Further, the quality of behavioral choices regarding these situations predicted evaluations of social competence made by significant persons in the preschool environment.

Specifically, children who were more emotionally positive and/or expressive showed a distinctive social cognitive pattern of sad, not angry, affective choices and prosocial, not aggressive, behavioral choices. Emotionally expressive, positive children may be more able to mentally focus on problematic peer situations and organize socially competent responses (Hoffman, 1975; Sroufe, Schork, Motti, Lawroski, & LaFreniere, 1984; Waters & Sroufe, 1983).

Understanding others' emotional viewpoints in order to choose or perform skilled prosocial responses is a central element of many theories of prosocial behavior (Eisenberg, 1986). The relation between such understanding of emotion and actual prosocial behavior is supported by our earlier work (Denham, 1986), and in this study, children's understanding of emotions was related to prosocial behavioral choices. The discovery that understanding of emotions also appears to fuel thinking about performance of prosocial behavior begins to uncover the complex social cognitive processes by which it relates to that observed behavior.

Further, children who were less able to label emotional expressions more often chose happy affective responses on the CST. Misperceiving negative situations as positive appears to be a distinct developmental delay; for example, earlier research has shown that confusing happy and sad expressions and situations is inversely related to likability (Denham, McKinley, et al., 1990).

The relations among CST affective and behavioral variables and others' assessments of children's social competence were complex. It was clear that children who were more well-liked by their peers chose prosocial, not aggressive, behavioral responses. As with the results for understanding of emotion, this social cognitive finding is supported by actual observations of better-liked children showing more prosocial, and less aggressive, behaviors (Denham, McKinley, et al., 1990). Accurately processing the social cues in peer situations is hypothesized as an initial step in a complex social cognitive process by which prosocial behavior relates to likability (Dodge et al., 1986; Putallaz, 1983); this investigation tapped such a relation in children somewhat younger than studied previously.

Children seen by their teacher as more miserable and fearful in the preschool classroom chose angry, but not sad, CST affective responses. Moreover, they chose manipulative, avoidant, but not prosocial, behavioral responses. Children who score high on this PPBQ scale appear quite unhappy in the preschool classroom, and may be participating in a cycle where the skewed, defensive quality of their social problem-solving only serves to continue their social failure and increase their misery. Their predominant affective choice, anger, also should be highlighted: Fearful, miserable preschoolers may indeed exhibit frustration and aggression when interacting with peers.

Results from the regression analyses stress the importance of both the quality of children's solutions to problematic peer situations, and of including affect in the social cognitive process, in the prediction of social competence in the preschool classroom. The combination of positive social cognitive strategies (i.e., prosocial solutions) and affective qualities (realistic distress in challenging situations, happiness in the preschool, and overall understanding of emotions) was especially effective in predicting social competence.

Given the import of these social cognitive and affective attributes, the search for the socialization roots of capabilities which support peer competence is vital. Early investigations have suggested modeling of parental emotional expressiveness during interaction (Putallaz, 1987), and commonality between maternal and children's social cognition about peer situations (Pettit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988). Other fruitful avenues for future research would be to examine the socialization of social cognition about affective and behavioral choices during challenging peer situations, as well as the more general socialization of emotional expressiveness and understanding of emotion, which support this social cognition.

Footnotes

The director, teachers, and children of the Project for the Study of Young Children graciously made this study possible. CST data comprise a large part of the second author's doctoral dissertation. The authors also acknowledge the assistance of Joanne Ayyash, Elizabeth Couchoud, Carlton Hicks, Soueang Lay, and Marcia McKinley, who observed or administered emotion understanding and sociometric measures. We would also like to thank Elizabeth Lemerise and Jennifer Mitchell-Copeland, who made helpful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Reprints may be requested from:

Susanne A. Denham
Department of Psychology
George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030

TABLE 1

Descriptive Data for All Variables

Variable                       M        SD

CST Choices

Happy                         0.64     0.62
Sad                           1.25     1.00
Angry                         0.93     0.98
Neutral                       0.18     0.39
Prosocial                     1.43     1.03
Aggressive                    0.64     0.95
Manipulative                  0.32     0.55
Avoidant                      0.61     0.79

Observed Emotion[a]

Happy                         0.51     0.32
Sad                           0.03     0.04
Angry                         0.12     0.14
Expressive                    0.75     0.32

Understanding of Emotion

Labeling                     13.74     1.51
Situations                   32.22     7.79

Sociometric Rating

Weighted Mean                 2.13     0.24

Teacher Rating (PPBQ)

Aggressive                    2.82     3.38
Miserable/Fearful             1.32     1.31

a All observed emotion variables are frequencies per minute.

TABLE 2

Intercorrelations Among Challenging Situation Task Categories

Legend for Chart:

A - Affective, Happy
B - Affective, Sad
C - Affective, Angry
D - Affective, Neut
E - Behavioral, Prosoc
F - Behavioral, Aggress
G - Behavioral, Manip
H - Behavioral, Avoid

                              CST Responses

    A     B     C         D       E        F        G        H

1.  --  -.33  -.17     -.34[a]   .07      .03      .24     -.30

2.            -.81[c]  -.02      .36[a]  -.45[b]  -.02      .08

3.                     -.16     -.44[b]   .53[c]  -.30      .15

4.                               .08     -.22      .41[a]  -.13

5.                                       -.63[c]  -.12   -.47[c]

6.                                                -.27     -.19

7.                                                         -.21

a p < .10. b p < .05. c p < .01.

TABLE 3

Intercorrelations of Challenging Situation Task Variables with Observed Emotions, Emotion Knowledge, and Social Competence Ratings

Legend for Chart:

A - Affective, Happy
B - Affective, Sad
C - Affective, Angry
D - Affective, Neut
E - Behavioral, Prosoc
F - Behavioral, Aggress
G - Behavioral, Manip
H - Behavioral, Avoid

                             CST Responses

    A      B       C        D      E        F       G         H

Observed Emotions

Happiness
  -.16   .45[a]  -.31     -.07   .44[a]  -.39[a]  -.17      .00

Sadness
   .12  -.10     -.06      .20  -.06     -.10      .02      .18

Anger
   .12   .20     -.15     -.28   .14      .14     -.22     -.19

Expressive
   .00   .48[a]  -.37[a]  -.23   .53[b]  -.24     -.30     -.22

Understanding of Emotions

Aggregate
   .06   .00     -.05      .03   .40[a]  -.25      .06     -.24

Social Competence Ratings

Sociometric Rating
  -.30   .25     -.11      .12   .44[a]  -.40[a]  -.06     -.06

PPBQ Aggression
   .06  -.13      .11     -.03  -.01      .03     -.21      .13

PPBQ Miserable/Fearful
   .04  -.43[a]   .40[a]   .18  -.52[b]   .04     .37[a]  .38[a]

a p < .05. b p < .01.

DIAGRAM: Figure 1 Model sociometric ratings via CST sadness and prosocial strategies.

DIAGRAM: Figure 2. Model predicting sociometric ratings via CST anger and aggressive strategies.

DIAGRAM: Figure 3. Model predicting teacher ratings of via CST sadness and prosocial strategies.

DIAGRAM: Figure 4. Model predicting teacher ratings of sadness via CST anger and aggressive strategies.

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Appendix

Item 1: You are building a very tall tower of blocks. But Bobby knocked it down. How do you feel? What do you do?

Do you just build another tower? Hit Bobby or yell at him?

Cry? Find something else to play with?

Item 2: You are having a good time playing in the sandbox when Bobby hits you. How do you feel? What do you do?

Do you tell him that's not a nice thing to do? Hit him back? Cry?

Go play somewhere else?

Item 3. You see some of your friends playing a game of "Candyland." You would really like to play, too. How do you feel? What do you do?

Ask if you can play with them?

Mess up the game by taking one of the pieces?

Stand on the side and look sad?

Wait and see if they notice you?

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By Susanne A. Denham , Beverly Bouril and Francesca Belouad

George Mason University