The assessment of empathy in early childhood

Lennon, Randy; Eisenberg, Nancy; Carroll, James L.

doi:10.1016/0193-3973(83)90024-2

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Although little research has been conducted on children's emotional experiences during communicative events (McDevitt & Ford, 1987), adults clearly appreciate that communication breakdown can be frustrating for both speaker and listener. General social-developmental research reveals increases with age in children's role taking and understanding of emotions (Selman, 1976), and children's understanding of simple emotions such as "bad" and "sad " is expanded to include more complex emotions (Lennon, Eisenberg, & Carroll, 1983). Consequendy, we expected that there would be a developmental increase in perceptions of complex emotions for speakers and listeners (e.g., being nervous, frustrated) and a decrease in simple negative emotions (e.g., being sad, angry).…”

Section: Listening Is One Of the Primary Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's Beliefs about Listening: Is It Enough to Be Still and Quiet?

McDevitt¹,

Spivey²,

Sheehan³

et al. 1990

Child Development

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This study examined children's conception of listening and their performance as listeners, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children were interviewed for their conceptions of good listening, their beliefs about appropriate actions for confused listeners to take, their attributions of responsibility for a listener's confusion, their reports of how speakers and listeners feel during communication breakdown, and their ability to detect inconsistencies during a comprehension-monitoring task. Results indicated that older children relied less on behavioral orientation and more on attempts to comprehend and other criteria in their definitions of good listening. Children believed that appropriate listening responses depend on the situation, and there was a developmental increase in asking the speaker a question and listening more carefully. With age, children also tended to report more complex negative emotions for listeners and speakers experiencing a breakdown in understanding. Children recalled incongruent material more than congruent material on the comprehension-monitoring task.

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Section: Listening Is One Of the Primary Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's Beliefs about Listening: Is It Enough to Be Still and Quiet?

McDevitt¹,

Spivey²,

Sheehan³

et al. 1990

Child Development

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“…Because of its low correlations with other variables (especially facial reactions to the negative slides), children's reports of bad feelings to negative slides at T1 were dropped from the SEM analysis. This lack of a relation was not surprising because young children's reports of empathy (especially the reports of negative feelings) generally do not relate in expected ways to other variables (e.g., prosocial behavior) and their validity has been seriously challenged Eisenberg & Miller, 1987;Lennon, Eisenberg, & Carroll, 1983). Children's externalizing problems and social competence were indicated by parents' and/or teachers' ratings, respectively (social competence had only one indicator at T1 because only teacher report of social competence was obtained at that assessment).…”

Section: Testing the Parent-driven Socialization Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relations of Parental Warmth and Positive Expressiveness to Children's Empathy‐Related Responding and Social Functioning: A Longitudinal Study

et al. 2002

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This study examined the concurrent and cross-time relations of parental observed warmth and positive expressivity to children's situational facial and self-reported empathic responding, social competence, and externalizing problems in a sample of 180 elementary school children. Data was collected when the children were in second to fifth grades (age: M = 112.8 months), and again 2 years later. Cross-sectional and longitudinal structural equation models supported the hypothesis that parents' (mostly mothers') positive expressivity mediated the relation between parental warmth and children's empathy, and children's empathy mediated the relation between parental positive expressivity and children's social functioning. These relations persisted after controlling for prior levels of parenting and child characteristics. Moreover, concurrent and cross-time consistencies were found on measures of parenting, children's situational empathic responding, and social functioning.

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“…It is possible that these differences are because young children interact primarily with same-gender peers during early childhood. It is suspected that the mixed findings seen across studies in gender differences in prosocial actions are a result of variation in the manner in which prosocial behaviors are studied (e.g., interviews, observations) and the different types of prosocial behaviors assessed Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989;Jackson & Tisak, 2001;Lennon, Eisenberg, & Carroll, 1983).…”

Section: Gender Differences In Children's Prosocial Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%