Abstract

GALLARDO ZANETTA, Ana María  and  FARKAS KLEIN, Chamarrita. Analysis of the ability to represent emotions in 30 months old children: Relationship with child’s sex and temperament and parental ability to represent emotions. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2018, vol.8, n.1, pp.5-16. ISSN 2007-4719.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fpsi.20074719e.2018.1.01.

The ability to represent emotions is understood as the ability to produce facial and corporal movements intentionally, to do “as if” the person is experiencing a certain kind of emotion. The aim of this research was to describe the ability to represent.t emotions in 30 months old children, and analyze how this ability was related to the children’s temperament and gender, as well as the ability to represent emotions in their parents. In the study participated 80 children with their parents, and the design was descriptive, transversal and correlational. The procedure included the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire (ECBQ-VSF) to assess children’s temperament, and an experimental situation designed to assess the representation of 6 emotions in adults and children; happiness, sadness, anger, scare, pride and shame. The results showed that the ability to represent emotions in 30 months old children was related only with the negative affect dimension of temperament, and facial intensity to represent emotions on parents, but no relation was observed with children’s gender.

Keywords : Early infancy; Emotions’ representation; Temperament; Gender.