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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.)

Within the last 20 years, transitions in the conceptualization of emotion and its development have given rise to calls for an explanatory framework that captures emotional development in all its organizational complexity and variability. Recent attempts have been made to couch emotional development in terms of a dynamical systems approach through utilization of principles like self-organization and emergence. In this article, we review and evaluate these attempts, both at the level of theoretical framework and empirical instantiation. We trace the dynamic systems approach to emotional development from theoretical origins in the work of Fogel and Wolff to the more recent framework of Lewis. We also chart its empirical applications from the standpoint of research strategy specific to the approach. We also explore the challenges this approach faces in promoting its framework as both unique and beneficial to the study of stability and change in emotion.

This paper presents a unitary approach to emotion and emotion regulation, building on the excellent points in the lead article by Cole, Martin, and Dennis (this issue), as well as the fine commentaries that follow it. It begins by stressing how, in the real world, the processes underlying emotion and emotion regulation appear to be largely one and the same, rendering the value of the distinction largely for the benefit of analysis. There is an extensive discussion of how the same processes can generate emotions (i.e., are constitutive of emotion) and account for variability of manifestation of emotion in context (i.e., regulate them). Following an extensive review of many of the principles involved in emotion and emotion regulation, the paper presents implications for developmental study of infants and children, includes several methodological recommendations, and concludes with an analysis of the extent to which contemporary affective neuroscience contributes to the study of emotion and emotion regulation.

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)

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.03.007 Byline: Susan B. Perlman (a)(b), Linda A. Camras (c), Kevin A. Pelphrey (a) Keywords: Emotion knowledge; Emotion socialization; Emotional development; Vagal tone Abstract: 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. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA (b) Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA (c) Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614, USA Article History: Received 22 September 2007; Revised 19 March 2008

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. On measures of smiling and crying, Chinese infants scored lower than European American infants, whereas Japanese infants were similar to the European American infants or fell between the two other groups. Results suggest that differences in expressivity between European American and Chinese infants are more robust than those between European American and Japanese infants and that Chinese and Japanese infants can differ significantly. Cross-cultural differences were also found for some specific brow, cheek, and midface facial actions (e.g., brows lowered). These are discussed in terms of current controversies about infant affective facial expressions.

Maltreated and nonmaltreated children (ages 3-7 years) were paired for brief play sessions involving a single desirable object. Facial, verbal, and physical actions used while negotiating access to the object were examined. Results showed that the maltreated-nonmaltreated pairs were able to engage in a negotiation process resulting in approximately equal sharing of the object. The differences found between maltreated and nonmaltreated children primarily suggested that maltreated children were somewhat hesitant to engage their partners. Results also showed that children's scores on a facial expression recognition task predicted greater responsiveness to their partners' indication of reluctance to relinquish the object.