Citation

Qu L, Lim ZM. Child Dev. 2016; 87(5): 1550-1563.

Affiliation

Nanyang Technological University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/cdev.12540

PMID

27089833

Abstract

This study examined how an adult's descriptions of a situation could influence children's appraisal, feelings, and subsequent psychological functions. After baseline measures, 81 middle-class Singaporean kindergarten children (Mage  = 5.6 years, SD = 0.6) were exposed to an ambiguous accident and provided with positive, negative, or no descriptions of the accident. Children's appraisal of the experience, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game were measured. The results revealed that the descriptions of the accident influenced children's appraisal, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game.

© 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Language: en