Article
Recognition and Posing of Emotional Expressions by Abused Children and Their Mothers
Developmental Psychology
(1988)
Abstract
Twenty abused and 20 nonabused pairs of children (3 to 7 years of age) and their mothers participated
in a facial expression posing task and a facial expression recognition task. The expressions produced
by subjects were judged on emotion content by naive raters and were coded using Friesen and Ekman's
(1984) Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS). Data analysis indicated that abused
children and their mothers pose less recognizable expressions than nonabused children and mothers.
Although abused children were less accurate than nonabused children in recognizing emotional
expressions, there was no difference in recognition accuracy between the two groups of mothers. A
significant correlation between mothers' posing scores and children's recognition scores was also
obtained. These results suggest that abused children may not observe easily interpreted voluntary
displays of emotion by their mothers as often as nonabused children. This may partially explain the
difference in recognition (and production) abilities of abused and nonabused children.
Disciplines
Publication Date
1988
Citation Information
Linda A. Camras, Sheila Ribordy, Jean Hill, Steve Martino, et al.. "Recognition and Posing of Emotional Expressions by Abused Children and Their Mothers" Developmental Psychology Vol. 24 Iss. 6 (1988) p. 776 - 781 ISSN: 0012-1649 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/linda_camras/51/