Female preschoolers' perceptions of affective responses and interpersonal behavior in videotaped episodes.

A Reconsideration of the Developmental Study of Empathy

“…Most typically the child's ability to discriminate and label facial expressions is assessed; a few studies have required the child to recall the sequence and interpret the details of slide narratives or filmed action sequences (Feshbach, 1975 ;Feshhach and Roe, ]968, . Some researchers have added experimental variations in order to differ entiate between a child's affective labeling of another's response to a situation and his own appraisal of that situation (Burnsand Cavey, 1957;Chandler, 1974: Deutsch, 1974aIannotti, 1974).…”

The development of children's cognitive and affective role-taking abilities in relation to aggressive behavior in the classroom

“…However, the extent of the relationship has varied with type of role-taking and testing procedure. Cognitive role-taking (Chandler, 1973), and af fective role-taking (Deutsch, 1974) as defined in the present study have previously been found significantly independent of general in telligence.…”

“…It was hypothesized the congruous episodes would be easier to interpret than incongruous episodes where contradictory cues had to be simultaneously A recent study by Greenspan, Barenboim, and Chandler (1976) sought a developmental perspective of empathie ability as a cognitive skill for first-and third-grade children. Similar to previous studies (Kurdeck and Rodgon, 1975;Deutsch, 1974), the authors manipulated relative degree of congruence between the contextual cues provided by the thematic character of the stimulus situation, and the affective expression evidenced by a target character at the end of the story.…”

“…There is research evidence (Chandler & Greenspan, 1972;Deutsch, 1974; Kurdeck et al,, 1975;Greenspan et al, 1976) demonstrating the development of cognitive role-taking and affective role-taking abilities. These skills undergo the kind of qualitative structural reorganization which cognitive developmental theorists such as Piaget (1970) and Kohlberg (1969) have posited for cognition in general and for the area of social cognitive development.…”

“…However, the youngest children's performance was significantly below that of the older children on the perspectivetaking task (Cochran's ^ = 12.3, £< .001). Chandler and Greenspan (1972) Deutsch (1974), however, presented a decentering measure as an empathy instrument to assess whether 48 female preschoolers were able to focus on more than one stimulus element in making judgments of another's affective state. To achieve this, there were two story episodes in volving positive interpersonal behavior followed by negative affect, and two episodes of negative interpersonal behavior followed by positive affect.…”