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Collectivism remains a dominant force in the Chinese society and schooling is a process to instill collectivistic values in the students, although there has been a noticeable increase in individualistic orientation among Chinese youth. Because China's meritocratic educational system endorses high individualism to enhance academic competitiveness and performance, the Chinese educational system is contradictorily both collectivistic and individualistic. Within meritocratic educational systems, academic performance influences students' psychosocial adjustment. However, the role of students' individualistic orientation and collectivistic orientation on their psychosocial adjustment and the role of them on the link between academic performance and psychosocial adjustment are not well understood. To address this issue, we obtained survey data from 1003 6-12th grade Chinese students on their academic performance, individualistic orientation, collectivistic orientation, and psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-esteem, anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, peer relations, and parent-child relationship quality). Results showed the students' academic performance scores predicted scores for all five psychosocial adjustment subscales in expected directions; higher collectivistic orientation scores predicted lower depression scores, higher parent-child relationship quality scores and peer relation scores, while higher individualistic orientation scores predicted higher self-esteem scores and higher depression scores. Finally, the influence of academic performance on anxiety symptoms was moderated by the students' individualistic orientation.

Emotional communication regulates the behaviors of social partners. Research on individuals' responding to others' emotions typically compares responses to a single negative emotion compared with responses to a neutral or positive emotion. Furthermore, coding of such responses routinely measure surface level features of the behavior (e.g., approach vs. avoidance) rather than its underlying function (e.g., the goal of the approach or avoidant behavior). This investigation examined infants' responding to others' emotional displays across 5 discrete emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Specifically, 16-, 19-, and 24-month-old infants observed an adult communicate a discrete emotion toward a stimulus during a naturalistic interaction. Infants' responses were coded to capture the function of their behaviors (e.g., exploration, prosocial behavior, and security seeking). The results revealed a number of instances indicating that infants use different functional behaviors in response to discrete emotions. Differences in behaviors across emotions were clearest in the 24-month-old infants, though younger infants also demonstrated some differential use of behaviors in response to discrete emotions. This is the first comprehensive study to identify differences in how infants respond with goal-directed behaviors to discrete emotions. Additionally, the inclusion of a function-based coding scheme and interpersonal paradigms may be informative for future emotion research with children and adults. Possible developmental accounts for the observed behaviors and the benefits of coding techniques emphasizing the function of social behavior over their form are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

This study seeks to extend previous research on family stress, parenting, and child adjustment to families with adopted Chinese children. In doing so, we also seek to strengthen inferences regarding the experiential underpinnings of previously obtained relationships among these variables by determining if they also occur in families where parents and children are not biologically related. Participants were families of 133 preschool-age adopted Chinese girls (M[subscript age] = 5.2 years, SD = 0.7; M[subscript age at adoption] = 12.8 months, SD = 4.1). Data on family stress, parenting styles, and children's behavioral adjustment were collected from the adoptive mothers with the Social Problem Questionnaire (SPQ), Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ), and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) respectively. Results showed that adoptive mothers reported relatively mild family stress, frequent authoritative parenting, and few behavior problems in their children. Nonetheless, family stress, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles positively correlated with children's behavioral problems. Finally, authoritarian parenting mediated the effect of non-child-related family stress (NCR-stress) on the adopted Chinese girls' CBCL internalizing and overall problems, even after controlling for corresponding CBCL scores from 2 years earlier. Our results showed that the overall pattern of relationships found in non-adoptive families is also seen in families with adopted Chinese children. (Contains 4 tables.)

This study examined relationships among parents' physiological regulation, their emotion socialization behaviors, and their children's emotion knowledge. Parents' resting cardiac vagal tone was measured, and parents provided information regarding their socialization behaviors and family emotional expressiveness. Their 4- or 5-year-old children (N = 42) participated in a laboratory session in which their knowledge of emotional facial expressions and situations was tested and their own resting vagal tone was monitored. Results showed that parents' vagal tone was related to their socialization behaviors, and several parent socialization variables were related to their children's emotion knowledge. These findings suggest that parents' physiological regulation may affect the emotional development of their children by influencing their parenting behaviors. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study compared Mainland Chinese, Chinese American and European American mothers' self-reported emotional expression within the family. Mothers of 3-year-old European American (n = 40), Chinese American (n = 39) and Mainland Chinese (n = 36) children (n = 20 girls per group) completed the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ), a measure that includes 40 items describing the expression of positive and negative emotion (20 items each). Respondents indicate how frequently they engage in each expressive practice. Mothers also completed a questionnaire regarding family ecology variables. European American mothers reported significantly more positive emotional expression than Mainland Chinese mothers, although no significant differences were found for expression of negative emotion. While family ecology differed across groups, these variables were not related to the emotional expression scores. No child-gender differences were obtained. Results of this study confirm the presence of cultural differences in mothers' emotional expressivity. (Contains 2 tables.)

Do infants show distinct negative facial expressions for different negative emotions? To address this question, European American, Chinese, and Japanese 11-month-olds were videotaped during procedures designed to elicit mild anger or frustration and fear. Facial behavior was coded using Baby FACS, an anatomically based scoring system. Infants' nonfacial behavior differed across procedures, suggesting that the target emotions were successfully elicited. However evidence for distinct emotion-specific facial configurations corresponding to fear versus anger was not obtained. Although facial responses were largely similar across cultures, some differences also were observed. Results are discussed in terms of functionalist and dynamical systems approaches to emotion and emotional expression. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While both post-institutionalized groups scored lower than the never-institutionalized children, those from China performed better than those from Eastern Europe. Post-institutionalized children's performance was predicted by their age at adoption. (Contains 3 tables.)

European American, Japanese, and Chinese 11-month-olds participated in emotion-inducing laboratory procedures. Facial responses were scored with BabyFACS, an anatomically based coding system. Overall, Chinese infants were less expressive than European American and Japanese infants, suggesting that differences in expressivity between European American and Chinese infants are more robust than those between European American and Japanese infants. (Author/EV)

A cross-national study examined what Japanese, Chinese, and American infants communicated to naive observers in various contexts when facial information was not available. Found that cultural differences were manifested primarily in deviations from expected responses to situations; Chinese and Japanese were not rated as more surprised in the "surprise situation" than in the "fear situation," whereas American babies were. (Author)

Eighteen maltreated children were paired with nonmaltreated children (ages 3-7 years) for play sessions involving a single desirable object, resulting in generally successful negotiation and approximately equal sharing, though maltreated children appeared somewhat hesitant to engage their partners and were more responsive to partners' indication of reluctance to relinquish the object. (Author/DB)

Measured 5- and 12-month-old Japanese and U.S. infants' responses to an arm restraint procedure. Found that older infants exhibited shorter response latencies and produced more negative facial expressions than did younger infants. Among five month olds, U.S. infants produced negative facial expressions more quickly than did Japanese infants. (BC)

Maltreatment status and mothers' facial behavior predicted children's scores on an emotional expression recognition task. There were positive relations between mothers' and children's expressive behavior. Findings indicate that children's recognition and production of facial expressions depends in part on the expressive environment provided by their mothers. (RH)

There is surprisingly little empirical evidence supporting theoretical and anecdotal claims regarding the spontaneous production of prototypic facial expressions used in numerous emotion recognition studies. Proponents of innate prototypic expressions believe that this lack of evidence may be due to ethical restrictions against presenting powerful elicitors in the lab. The current popularity of internet platforms designed for public sharing of videos allows investigators to shed light on this debate by examining naturally-occurring facial expressions outside the laboratory. An Internet prank ("Scary Maze") has provided a unique opportunity to observe children reacting to a consistent fear- and surprise-inducing stimulus: The unexpected presentation of a "scary face" during an online maze game. The purpose of this study was to examine children's facial expressions in this naturalistic setting. Emotion ratings of non-facial behaviour (provided by untrained undergraduates) and anatomically-based facial codes were obtained from 60 videos of children (ages 4–7) found on YouTube. Emotion ratings were highest for fear and surprise. Correspondingly, children displayed more facial expressions of fear and surprise than for other emotions (e.g. anger, joy). These findings provide partial support for the ecological validity of fear and surprise expressions. Still prototypic expressions were produced by fewer than half the children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A total of 60 adults and 60 first graders were presented with brief stories and asked to supply the verbal statement (or directive) that would be used by the story character. Results confirmed expectations regarding situational use of directives for neutral-affect story characters. (Author/KS)

Investigates the development of awareness of conversational principles in preschool, first-, and third-grade children by presenting them with short stories ending with a verbal statement by a story character. Results suggest that children's understanding of conversational principles improves considerably between preschool and first grade. (Author/AS)

A total of 20 abused and 20 nonabused pairs of children of three-seven years and their mothers participated in a facial expression posing task and a facial expression recognition task. Findings suggest that abused children may not observe as often as nonabused children do the easily interpreted voluntary displays of emotion by their mothers. (RH)