The above review demonstrates the need in contemporary emotional development literature for further knowledge with respect to early childhood emotionality, specifically regarding individual differences in understanding emotions beyond the age of three (see, for example. Brown & Dunn, 1996).
Further, it also demonstrates the need in contemporary developmental literature for further knowledge with respect to the major influencing factors upon the child's emerging emotionality. Along with gaining more information concerning
individual differences with respect to emotion 'skills' in early childhood, comes the desire to know the origin o f these differences.
This thesis aims, therefore, to contribute to this field o f work a tool of measurement for assessing emotional understanding in the sixth year o f life, and seeks also to investigate the major influencing factors illuminated in the literature, hypothesising that the attachment relationship within the family will emerge as the strongest predictor of individual differences. This thesis, therefore, will also
contribute to attachment literature and will yield evidence needed by contemporary attachment enquiry regarding the predictive power of this early relationship upon the child's subsequent emotional life. The main practical effort o f this thesis, then, is to operationalise a new assessment of emotionality for early childhood; its main investigative effort is to determine the major predictive factors o f variability in emotionality, as measured by this assessment.
1.3.1. An outline of the present studv
Over the following empirical chapters, the present investigation examines the contribution of attachment quality, as well as that o f other influential
developmental and familial factors, to the child's emerging emotionality.
Chapter Two introduces a new measure of early childhood understanding of emotion, the Emotion-Recognition Task. The task's creation, procedure, and
coding system are discussed, as is the establishing o f reliability for the task. This new measure o f emotion 'skill' is considered in detail as the variables which it yields comprise the dependent variables fundamental to this thesis.
Chapter Three examines individual differences in the children's understanding o f emotion, as measured by the Emotion-Recognition Task, in relation to data from several potentially influential developmental and familial domains, such as: temperament, verbal abilities, socio-economic status, family size, age, and sex. The focus o f these comparisons, which concentrate on both concurrent and longitudinal associations, is to obtain a picture of the role of potentially influential developmental features of the child in his/her emerging emotionality, as well as the contribution of parents' characteristics to this development.
In Chapter Four, new methods of assessing attachment in the preschool and school-age years are employed in order to examine individual differences in
children's emotion 'skills,' as measured by the Emotion-Recognition Task, in
relation to the concurrent quality o f their attachment relationships with both mother and father.
Chapter Five examines individual differences in children's emotionality in relation to the quality of their attachment relationships with both mother and father in infancy. The direct influence o f early attachment relationships on the
development o f children's emotionality is discussed, while the possibility of an indirect contribution of this early experience is also considered.
Chapter Six investigates individual differences in children's emotion 'skills' in relation to their parents' representation of their own attachment experience, as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview. Along with the traditional adult attachment classifications, rating of parents' Reflective-Self Function (their capacity to reflect reasonably about intentionality with respect to the self and other in attachment relationships) is considered here in relation to the emotional understanding o f the child.
Chapter Seven examines the relative contribution of the correlates of children's understanding of emotions that are revealed in the preceding five
empirical chapters. A series of multivariate analyses is used to determine which of these correlates has the most potent influence.
1.3.2. The London Parent-Child Project
The empirical chapters of this thesis draw on data collected in a longitudinal study of attachment patterns being conducted by Professor Peter Fonagy and Drs. Howard and Miriam Steele. In 1987, 100 pregnant women and their husbands/partners were recruited for "a study aimed at better understanding how one's own experience of childhood may influence the parenting o f the next generation" from antenatal classes at University College Hospital in London. Selection criteria included primiparous status, current cohabitation with the father of the child, and, for both parents, age above 20 and fluency in the English language — established by completion of the short form of the Mill Hill
Vocabulary Scale (Raven, Court, & Raven, 1985) with no-one scoring less than the equivalent of the 40th percentile. About 50% of those to whom the study was described agreed to participate. O f the group who declined participation, some did not meet the selection criteria, others could not obtain agreement from their
husbands/partners despite their interest in participating, with the remainder being non-responsive to the idea o f participation in the research. The sample turned out to be predominantly well-educated, white, and middle-class.
The project has completed data collection with these families at six stages to date: prenatally; when the infants were three months; when the infants were 12 months; when the infants were 18 months; when the children were five years (between the 59th and 65th months); and between the children's 66th and 72nd
months. The Emotion-Recognition Task was administered at the final visit. Other data which will be referred to throughout this thesis draws on information gathered using a range of measures conducted during the other five contacts with the
The Emotion-Recognition Task: procedure, reliability, and coding
Chapter summary:
The aim of this chapter is to describe the creation o f a new measure o f individual differences in the emotion recognition o f children in the sixth year. The specific aims of the task will be discussed, as will relevant background literature. The coding of the task will also be considered, along with evidence concerning the inter-rater reliability for this system, as well as test-retest reliability. Finally,
descriptive statistics for the main sample will be presented and the variability in the responses to the task of children in the sixth year discussed.