Understanding Mixed Emotions in Preschool: The Role of a Child’s Cognitive Development

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Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationship between preschool children’s understanding of mixed emotions and indicators of their cognitive development and gender and age. Mixed emotion comprehension is the ability of children to recognize and interpret emotions consisting of two emotions with different valences simultaneously. Assessment of preschool children’s understanding of mixed emotions was carried out using a set of tasks that modified Bylkina and Lucin’s methodology. Nonverbal intelligence was analyzed as indicators of cognitive development and children’s ability to apply dialectical thinking actions, perform formal operations, and predict the development of a situation. A total of 128 older preschool children took part in the study. The empirical study showed that understanding mixed emotions were related to the success of applying dialectical thought operations of transformation and mediation and formal operations of animation and prediction. No relationship was found between understanding mixed emotions and a child’s non-verbal intelligence. No differences were found in the success of understanding mixed emotions between girls and boys.

General Information

Keywords: dialectical thinking, formal thinking, nonverbal intelligence, mixed emotions, understanding mixed emotions

Journal rubric: Developmental Psychology

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/exppsy.2022150108

Funding. The reported study was funded by Russian Science Foundation (RSF), project number 19-18-00521.

Received: 14.09.2020

Accepted:

For citation: Veraksa N.E., Airapetyan Z.V., Bukhalenkova D.A., Gavrilova M.N., Tarasova K.S. Understanding Mixed Emotions in Preschool: The Role of a Child’s Cognitive Development. Eksperimental'naâ psihologiâ = Experimental Psychology (Russia), 2022. Vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 122–138. DOI: 10.17759/exppsy.2022150108. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

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Information About the Authors

Nikolai E. Veraksa, Doctor of Psychology, professor, Professor, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Educational Psychology and Pedagogical Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leading Researcher, Federal Sci­entific Center of Psychological and Multidisciplinary Research, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3752-7319, e-mail: neveraksa@gmail.com

Zlata V. Airapetyan, Junior researcher, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4466-9799, e-mail: zlata.a.v@yandex.ru

Daria A. Bukhalenkova, PhD in Psychology, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Researcher, Laboratory of Child Psychology and Digital Socialization, Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4523-1051, e-mail: d.bukhalenkova@inbox.ru

Margarita N. Gavrilova, PhD in Psychology, Junior Researcher of the Department of Psychology of Education and Pedagogy of the Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8458-5266, e-mail: gavrilovamrg@gmail.com

Kristina S. Tarasova, PhD in Psychology, Scientific Researcher, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9072-8761, e-mail: christinap@bk.ru

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