This study examined how an adult's descriptions of a situation could influence children's appraisal, feelings, and subsequent psychological functions. After baseline measures, 81 middle-class Singaporean kindergarten children (Mage = 5.6 years, SD = 0.6) were exposed to an ambiguous accident and provided with positive, negative, or no descriptions of the accident. Children's appraisal of the experience, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game were measured. The results revealed that the descriptions of the accident influenced children's appraisal, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.