Nancy L. Stein

The causal organisation of emotional knowledge: A developmental study.

Abstract Using a theory of emotional understanding, the basis for distinguishing among happiness, anger, and sadness was investigated. Three and six-year-old children and adults predicted and explained peoples emotional responses to different types of events. The events varied as to whether a persons goal was to attain or to avoid a state, whether the goal was achieved or not, who or what was responsible for success or failure, and whether the outcome was intentional or accidental. For all groups, the attainment and maintenance of goals was the primary focus of explanations for emotions and for the plans that followed emotions. A distinct set of features was used to infer and explain happiness as opposed to anger and sadness. Happiness was elicited by goal success and was followed by plans to maintain or enjoy current goal states. Anger and sadness were elicited by goal failure and were followed by plans to reinstate, replace, or forfeit goals. Anger occurred more frequently than sadness when an aversiv...

Story structure versus content in children's recall

Several previous investigations of story recall have consistently found that certain story constituents are better recalled than others, suggesting a universal, underlying representation for a story. The present study examined this possibility by controlling for the semantic content of settings, initiating events, internal responses, consequences, and reactions across versions of the same story. Using gist criteria, free and probed recall of these five categories was nearly equal, failing to replicate the previous findings. Using syntactic form and relative location criteria to measure recall accuracy, however, internal response and reaction categories underwent categorical transformations which replicated the prior pattern favoring settings, initiating events, and consequences in recall. The lack of differences in gist recall among the categories was attributed to the importance of story events in relationship to a goal—action—consequence hierarchy rather than to a story events structural functioning. The fact that subjects transformed the syntactic form and relative location of certain categorial information during recall suggests use of story schema operations at retrieval.

The definition of a story

Abstract This paper presents a discussion of theory and data related to the concept of a story. Three major issues are considered: (1) the functions of stories; (2) the relationship between function and comprehension of stories; and (3) the definition of a story. In addressing these issues, several different perspectives are considered. It is argued that the functions of storytelling are multifaceted and mirror the wide variety of motives that underlie human social behavior. This position is in direct contrast to recent arguments that the primary purpose of the story is to entertain. A review of several current definitions of a story is then presented, along with a discussion of the differences that exist among the different definitions. By reviewing psychological approaches to the organization of conceptual knowledge, it is argued that there is not a unique set of features which is used to identify stories. An alternative framework is then presented, where it is shown that the context and semantic content of events in a story sequence, as well as certain structural features, are critical in determining the class of stories and non-stories. Data from three studies are used to support this point of view.

Children'S Knowledge of Events: A Causal Analysis of Story Structure1

Publisher Summary This chapter examines models of story comprehension in relation to the specific constraints assumed to influence the process of constructing a coherent representation of stories. The chapter investigates the type of causal knowledge acquired about stories and whether this knowledge corresponds to hypotheses derived from current models of story understanding. It focuses on the development of story understanding by examining whether the very young, school-aged child has the ability to understand different types of stories. The chapter also integrates theoretical and development issues by discussing issues related to the acquisition of story schemata and the conditions under which learning from text occurs.

The Origins and Nature of Arguments: Studies in Conflict Understanding, Emotion, and Negotiation

The emergence and development of argumentation skills in interpersonal conflict situations are the focus of this study. The mental structures used to understand arguments are related to those used to understand social conflict and goal-directed action. The desire to maintain or dissolve a relationship, to persuade, and to understand a position operate throughout interpersonal arguments. Decisions made about whether a relationship should be maintained influence the reasoning and thinking during negotiation, the negotiation strategies, and the outcome of an argument. Because social goals are crucial to understanding argument, negotiations and memory for an argument may be affected as to bias and accuracy. The ability to understand an argument is claimed to emerge early in development. By 3 years of age, children understand and generate the principle components of an argument, either in face-to-face interaction or individual interviews. The ability to construct detailed, coherent rationales in defense of a favored position improves with age. This development, however, does not guarantee a deeper under-standing of ones opponents. The conditions that prevent greater understanding of the opposition from developing are discussed. The ways in which biases and limited understanding can be overcome are also considered.

The organisation of emotional experience: Creating links among emotion, thinking, language, and intentional action

Abstract This paper discusses how emotional experience is interpreted, understood, and represented. Changes in the status of valued goals, and whether or not these goals can be attained or maintained are key conditions in determining the occurrence of an emotional experience. In addition, assessing the certainty with which goals can be maintained is critical as to which emotion is experienced. This small set of dimensions can be used to identify, and differentiate emotions that are considered to be basic. Basic emotion categories share features, and their elicitation is contingent on a number of components coming into conjunction with one another simultaneously. Thus, for any one basic emotion to be elicited, at least three converging components need to be activated. This view of the conditions for emotion is discussed with reference to componential theories of emotion, and to its developmental and cross-cultural implications.

Children’s Understanding of Stories: A Basis for Moral Judgment and Dilemma Resolution

In the study of the development of moral judgment and reasoning, the influence of Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1969) continues to prevail (see Keasey, 1978, and Rest, in press, for recent examples). One reason for their success is that they were pioneers and broke the ground for others to cultivate. A second reason is that they chose a problem for which there was consensus as to its importance: both men were concerned with one’s developing knowledge about harmful behavior and its personal and social consequences.

Basic emotions: Theory and measurement

Abstract There have been new conceptualisations and new evidence bearing on the question of whether or not some emotions are basic. There has been innovation in work on cognitive appraisals of emotions, in cross-cultural research, and in developmental psychology. We introduce some of these ideas, and in introducing the contributors to this volume, we lay out four considerations that affect understanding of whether or not some emotions are basic. These considerations are the separability of components of emotion, the differences of definitions, and indicators used by different theorists of basic emotions, questions about whether some emotions are derived from others, and mappings between elicitors, accompaniments, and consequences of emotions.

The quality of family relationships within and across generations: A social relations analysis

Parents and two children (average ages: 81/2 and 51/2 years) in 76 families each appraised the quality of their relationships with one another. Family members described generally positive relationships, both from their own perspectives (e.g., “I am often nice to my mother”) and from the perspectives of their relationship partners (e.g., “My mother is often nice to me”). Sibling relationships were rated less positively than other family relationships. The Social Relations Model was utilised to examine the patterning of family relationships. Actor effects, indicating consistent relationship qualities for each individual family member, were found, especially for ratings of self. Partner effects, indicating consistency in relationships as assessed by others in the family, were present for ratings of the children as relationship partners. Relationship effects were pervasive, indicating that specific family relationships had distinct qualities. Participants’ own ratings suggested that reciprocity would characterise all family relationships, in that strong correlations were found between each person’s rating of self and other, but only the marital and the sibling relationship evidenced relational reciprocity, as assessed by correlations between relationship effects found for relationship partners.

Understanding and Organizing Emotional Experience: Autobiographical Accounts of Traumatic Events

Autobiographical accounts of traumatic and stressful emotional events reveal how we understand and organize personally meaningful experiences. Our analysis of traumatic and emotional narratives focuses on the ways in which the persons event memory predicts the impact of trauma and emotional experiences on psychological well-being (e.g., depression or positive morale) of both children and adults. Four primary factors account for the relationship between memory and psychological well-being: 1) beliefs (evaluations) about the experience of trauma or stress; 2) specific emotions expressed in reaction to the events; 3) beliefs about ones competence at coping with and overcoming adversity; and 4) the generation of new goals formulated to replace those lost irrevocably. The organization and narration of emotional understanding, while diverse and complex in content, is highly constrained as to the number and kind of emotions expressed. The relationships among specific emotions, antecedents, beliefs, and plans of action are also constrained. The presence of these constraints, as well as the use of a causal theory of emotion and goal-directed action, allow us to make predictions about psychological well-being and memory for emotional events.