Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children: Heterogeneity in the development of emotion understanding

Abstract

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understanding tasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels (happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to stories describing situations for these emotions. While both post-institutionalized groups scored lower than the never-institutionalized children, those from China performed better than those from Eastern Europe. Post-institutionalized children's performance was predicted by their age at adoption.

Emotion Identification From Facial Expressions in Children Adopted Internationally

“…Fifteen (65%) of the Chinese children had experienced foster care, although the duration of foster care was unknown for some of the children. Camras et al (2006) found that the children adopted from China performed better than the Eastern European group and as well as the control group. Adoption age and chronological age predicted performance, but foster care experience and mother's education level were not predictive of performance.…”

“…For example, preschool-age children tend to focus on facial expressions to interpret emotions (Herba & Phillips, 2004), and they are 87%-89% accurate in identifying pictures of happy, sad, and mad facial expressions and approximately 64% accurate in identifying facial expressions showing fear (Weimer et al, 2012). Children residing in institutions do not receive the same amount or quality of social interaction as children raised by their biological families and are delayed in their ability to reference emotions from facial expressions (Camras et al, 2006; Leiden Conference on the Development and Care of Children Without Permanent Parents, 2012;Wismer et al, 2004). Developmental delays in interpretation of this type of nonverbal communication may result in social communication problems, specifically in referencing and understanding emotions (Nowicki & Mitchell, 1998).…”

“…The Wismer Fries and Pollak (2004) study was replicated using an additional group of 23 children adopted from China who were compared with the original group of 18 children adopted from Eastern Europe and 43 nonadopted children between ages 4 and 5.5 years (Camras et al, 2006). Fifteen (65%) of the Chinese children had experienced foster care, although the duration of foster care was unknown for some of the children.…”

“…There is emerging evidence that children exposed to institutional rearing demonstrate difficulty identifying emotions from facial expressions (Camras, Perlman, Wismer Fries, & Pollak, 2006;Wismer Fries & Pollak, 2004) and have poorer social competence than their peers (for a review, see Hwa-Froelich, 2012b). Children adopted from abroad generally experience little face-to-face interaction with caring adults before adoption, and these limited face-to-face interactions are with adults from the infant's birth country (Johnson, 2000; Leiden Conference on the Development and Care of Children Without Permanent Parents, 2012;Miller, 2005).…”

Disentangling the effects of cognitive development and linguistic expertise: A longitudinal study of the acquisition of English in internationally-adopted children

“…Institutional environments can have lasting effects on qualitative features of children's emotional development and social cognition (Fries & Pollak, 2004;Yagmurlu, Berument & Celimli, 2005;Camras, Perlman, Fries & Pollak, 2006). Presumably this experience might also alter the course of cognitive or linguistic development.…”