Individual and socio-emotional differences in autobiographical emotional appraisal of preschoolers

RUETTI, ELIANA; LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.; RAMÍREZ, VERÓNICA

Journal of Child Experimental Child Psychology

Elsevier

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2020 vol. 17

0022-0965

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 autobiographicalevents 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 emotionalaccuracy 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-yearolds 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.