Tyler Colasante

School-Based Interventions to Promote Empathy-Related Responding in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Analysis

Empathy has been identified as a core component of social and emotional functioning across development. Various prevention and intervention programs have utilized components of empathy-related responding to promote the development of children’s and adolescents’ social-emotional functioning and impede their aggression in school contexts. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of select school-based empathy interventions and the extent to which they align with developmental theory and research. First, we review current conceptualizations of empathy-related responding, identify its components, outline its normative development, and describe the need for developmentally tailored interventions. We then identify and assess the effectiveness and developmental sensitivity of 19 school-based programs with strong empirical support that target empathy-related responding across childhood and adolescence. Although the majority of these programs showed some degree of developmental differentiation between grades, none considered developmental differences within grades. Commencing interventions earlier in development and targeting higher numbers of empathy-related constructs were, in part, associated with larger effects. We discuss how future research can bridge the gap between basic developmental research and the design of developmentally tailored interventions to promote empathy-related responding.

“Only you can play with me!” Children’s inclusive decision making, reasoning, and emotions based on peers’ gender and behavior problems

This study examined the development of childrens decisions, reasoning, and emotions in contexts of peer inclusion/exclusion. We asked an ethnically diverse sample of 117 children aged 4years (n=59; 60% girls) and 8years (n=58; 49% girls) to choose between including hypothetical peers of the same or opposite gender and with or without attention deficit/hyperactivity problems and aggressive behavior. Children also provided justifications for, and emotions associated with, their inclusion decisions. Both 4- and 8-year-olds predominantly chose to include the in-group peer (i.e., the same-gender peer and peers without behavior problems), thereby demonstrating a normative in-group inclusive bias. Nevertheless, children included the out-group peer more in the gender context than in the behavior problem contexts. The majority of children reported group functioning-related, group identity-related, and stereotype-related reasoning after their in-group inclusion decisions, and they associated happy feelings with such decisions. Although most children attributed sadness to the excluded out-group peer, they attributed more anger to the excluded out-group peer in the aggression context compared with other contexts. We discuss the implications of our findings for current theorizing about childrens social-cognitive and emotional development in contexts of peer inclusion and exclusion.

Inhibitory Control and Moral Emotions: Relations to Reparation in Early and Middle Childhood

ABSTRACT. This study examined links between inhibitory control, moral emotions (sympathy and guilt), and reparative behavior in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-olds (N = 162). Caregivers reported their childrens reparative behavior, inhibitory control, and moral emotions through a questionnaire, and children reported their guilt feelings in response to a series of vignettes depicting moral transgressions. A hypothesized meditation model was tested with inhibitory control relating to reparative behavior through sympathy and guilt. In support of this model, results revealed that high levels of inhibitory control were associated with high levels of reparative behavior through high levels of sympathy and guilt. However, the mediation of inhibitory control to reparation through guilt was significant for 4-year-olds only. Results are discussed in relation to the temperamental, regulatory, and affective-moral precursors of reparative behavior in early and middle childhood.

The Codevelopment of Sympathy and Overt Aggression from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence.

We assessed the extent to which feelings of sympathy and aggressive behaviors codeveloped from 6 to 12 years of age in a representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273). Caregivers and teachers reported children’s sympathy and overt aggression in 3-year intervals. Second-order latent curve models indicated general mean-level declines in sympathy and overt aggression over time, although the decline in sympathy was relatively small. Importantly, both trajectories were characterized by significant interindividual variability. A bivariate second-order latent curve model revealed a small—moderate negative correlation between the latent slopes of sympathy and overt aggression, suggesting an inverse codevelopmental relationship between the constructs from middle childhood to early adolescence. In terms of predictive effects, an autoregressive cross-lagged model indicated a lack of bidirectional relations between sympathy and overt aggression, underscoring the primacy of the variables’ rank-order stability. We discuss the codevelopment and developmental relations of sympathy and aggression, their potential conjoint social-emotional mechanisms, and the practical implications thereof.

The physiological correlates of children's emotions in contexts of moral transgression

Heightened attention to sociomoral conflicts and arousal at the prospect of committing moral transgressions are thought to increase the likelihood of negatively valenced moral emotions (NVMEs; e.g., guilt) in children. Here, we tested this biphasic model of moral emotions with a psychophysiological framework. For a series of vignettes depicting moral transgressions, 5- and 8-year-olds (N=138) were asked to anticipate their emotions as hypothetical victimizers. Their responses were coded for the presence and intensity of NVMEs. In addition, their heart rate (HR) was calculated for three intervals of interest: a baseline period, the presentation of vignettes, and the anticipation of emotions following vignettes. We used multilevel modeling to examine how change in childrens HR across these intervals related to the intensity of their NVMEs. Those who experienced greater HR deceleration from baseline to vignettes and greater acceleration from vignettes to anticipated emotions reported more intense NVMEs. We discuss the potential attention- and arousal-related processes behind childrens physiological reactivity and anticipated emotions in contexts of moral transgression.

Helping yourself helps others: Linking children’s emotion regulation to prosocial behavior through sympathy and trust.

Although emotionally well-regulated children are more likely to behave prosocially, the psychological processes that connect their emotion regulation abilities and prosocial behavior are less clear. We tested if other-oriented sympathy and trust mediated the links between emotion regulation capacities (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA], negative emotional intensity, and sadness regulation) and prosocial behavior in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-olds (N = 131; 49% girls). Resting RSA was calculated from children’s electrocardiogram data in response to a nondescript video. Sympathy was child and caregiver reported, whereas negative emotional intensity, sadness regulation, trust, and prosocial behavior were caregiver reported. Regardless of age, higher resting RSA was linked to higher sympathy, which was associated with higher prosocial behavior. The positive link between sadness regulation and prosocial behavior was mediated by higher sympathy and trust. Children’s other-oriented psychological processes may play important roles in translating certain emotion regulation capacities into prosocial behavior.

Children’s autonomic nervous system activity while transgressing: Relations to guilt feelings and aggression.

Despite the well-established protective functions of guilt across childhood, its underlying physiological mechanisms have received little attention. We used latent difference scores (LDS) to model changes in children’s (N = 267; 4- and 8-year-olds, 51% girls) skin conductance (SC) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) while they imagined themselves committing antisocial acts. We then tested if their later reports of guilt, caregiver-reported aggressive behavior, and age were associated with these physiological changes. For 8-year-olds, changes in RSA leading up to and during transgressions were uniquely associated with the intensity of guilt feelings after transgressions. Eight-year-olds with higher guilt were rated lower in aggression, although children’s physiology and aggression were not directly related. We discuss how fluctuations in physiology while transgressing may prepare children to mount adaptive guilt responses afterward and—more broadly—implications for understanding the mechanisms behind guilt and related behavior in early and middle childhood.

The special status of sad infant faces: age and valence differences in adults’ cortical face processing

Abstract Understanding the relative and joint prioritization of age- and valence-related face characteristics in adults’ cortical face processing remains elusive because these two characteristics have not been manipulated in a single study of neural face processing. We used electroencephalography to investigate adults’ P1, N170, P2 and LPP responses to infant and adult faces with happy and sad facial expressions. Viewing infant vs adult faces was associated with significantly larger P1, N170, P2 and LPP responses, with hemisphere and/or participant gender moderating this effect in select cases. Sad faces were associated with significantly larger N170 responses than happy faces. Sad infant faces were associated with significantly larger N170 responses in the right hemisphere than all other combinations of face age and face valence characteristics. We discuss the relative and joint neural prioritization of infant face characteristics and negative facial affect, and their biological value as distinct caregiving and social cues.

Preschoolers’ Anticipation of Sadness for Excluded Peers, Sympathy, and Prosocial Behavior

Abstract We investigated the relations between anticipation of sadness for excluded peers, sympathy, and prosocial behavior in a sample of 127 Italian preschoolers (Mage = 4.84 years, SD = 0.85). Children attributed emotions to hypothetical excluded peers who exhibited withdrawn versus aggressive behavior, and these attributions were coded for the presence and intensity of sadness. Teachers rated children’s sympathy and prosocial behavior via questionnaire. In general, children attributed more sadness to the withdrawn excluded peer than the aggressive excluded peer. A path analysis revealed that those who anticipated higher levels of sadness for the withdrawn excluded peer were rated higher in sympathy and, in turn, higher in prosocial behavior. Attributing high levels of sadness to withdrawn excluded peers—who portray relatively heightened need—may be an early social-emotional characteristic of children who are more sympathetic and more likely to channel other-oriented concerns into prosocial actions.

Cross-Informant Assessment of Children's Sympathy: Disentangling Trait and State Agreement

The use of multiple informants (e.g., caregivers and teachers) is recommended to obtain a comprehensive profile of children’s social emotional development. Evidence to date indicates that only a small-to-moderate degree of convergence exists between different informants’ assessments of children’s social-emotional functioning, especially when the contexts of such informants’ observations are also different. However, whether caregivers and teachers primarily disagree about children’s dispositional emotional tendencies or situational emotional fluctuations remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the extent to which caregivers and teachers converged in their evaluation of children’s dispositional and state sympathy (i.e., a relatively internal and low visibility emotional response of concern for another’s wellbeing) in a nationally representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273) followed from 6 to 12 years of age. Using analyses based in latent state–trait theory, we found that caregivers and teachers showed moderate-to-large agreement (r = .510) at the dispositional, trait level of children’s sympathy, but only a small level of agreement in their assessments of children’s situational, state-like manifestations of sympathy (r = .123). These findings highlight the differential convergence of adults’ ratings of one core dimension of children’s social-emotional development, i.e., sympathy, at the dispositional and situational levels, and, relatedly the need to investigate the reasons behind discrepancies at both levels of analysis. We elaborate on practical implications for designing social-emotional screening tools across different informants and contexts.