{"id":251,"date":"2020-04-21T15:02:44","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T14:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/upgrade-rocs\/?p=251"},"modified":"2020-08-21T14:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T13:10:00","slug":"where-the-wild-things-are-preschool-childrens-understanding-of-emotions-in-a-picture-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/where-the-wild-things-are-preschool-childrens-understanding-of-emotions-in-a-picture-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Wild Things Are: Preschool children\u2019s understanding of emotions in a picture book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Find more about the Kent author here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

About<\/span><\/b>\u202f<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

This project investigated whether <\/span>Maurice Sendak\u2019s picture book <\/span>Where the Wild Things Are<\/span><\/i> can be used as a means of emotion recognition in preschool children<\/span>. <\/span>The book has been praised for its ability to capture intense emotions, particularly anger, however, this had not been tested empirically before<\/span>. <\/span>Accordingly, the project looked at whether looking at the pictures of the book, listening to an audio recording of the book <\/span>(<\/span>only<\/span>)<\/span>, or listening to the recording while also looking at the picture helps preschool children and adults infer the<\/span> emotions of <\/span>anger, <\/span>happiness, <\/span>and <\/span>sadness<\/span>. <\/span>It further looked at whether <\/span>participants<\/span> can infer the positive and negative valence of these emotions<\/span>. <\/span>Further, given that previous work has shown that preschool children tend to <\/span>confuse<\/span> the emotions of anger and disgust and happiness and surprise<\/span> respectively<\/span>, this research also <\/span>explored this issue <\/span>further.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The<\/span> findings from this <\/span>research<\/span> have important implications for <\/span>children\u2019s emotion understanding and offer <\/span>recommendations<\/span> to teachers, parents, and caregivers with regards to the use of the <\/span>picture <\/span>book <\/span>in order <\/span>to facilitate <\/span>children\u2019s understanding of basic emotions.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Research Objectives<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To investigate whether <\/span>Where the Wild Things Are can be used as a tool of emotion recognition in preschool children and adults.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To investigate <\/span>whether presenting the book to the children visually and vocally is more didactically rich than presenting it visually or vocally only<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To <\/span>explore<\/span> if <\/span>children can understand basic emotions in the book as well as their (positive or negative<\/span>)<\/span> valence<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To <\/span>examine<\/span> whether <\/span>compared to adults, children confuse anger and disgust as well as happiness and surprise\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Programme and Methodology<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Presentation of <\/span>the picture book Where the Wild Things Are <\/span>and<\/span> an audio <\/span>version<\/span> of it <\/span>to <\/span>preschoolers<\/span> (<\/span>in nurseries<\/span>)<\/span> and university students<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Questions relevant to the emotion<\/span>al<\/span> disposition of the main character <\/span>of the book <\/span>in three target pictures representing anger, happiness<\/span>, and sadness<\/span> respectively<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Psychological testing <\/span>of facial expression recognition with a traditional <\/span>emotion <\/span>recognition task<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Findings<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Adults\u2019 understanding of emotions in the picture book and <\/span>the <\/span>photographs of facial expressions was superior to <\/span>children\u2019s<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Children confused anger and sadness in the book.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Children had difficulty recognising anger and happiness in the book when they were presented with an audio recording of the story <\/span>than visually, or visually and vocally simultaneously.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Similarly, children had difficulty grasping the negative and positive valence of the target pictures involving anger and happiness when these were presented via an audio recording, <\/span>than<\/span> visually, or visually and vocally simultaneously.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Compared to adults, children confused anger and disgust as well as happiness and surprised when photographs of respective facial expressions were presented to them.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Impact<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2022 \u00a0This project has\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0important practical implications for parents, teachers, and caregivers<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Showing the pictures of the book to <\/span>children, or<\/span> showing the pictures and reading the book to them simultaneously can facilitate their emotion understanding to a better extent than an audio presentation alone.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The findings also show that children may have difficulty understanding anger in the book in the absence of further discussion of how the main character is feeling<\/span>. <\/span>Given that anger is a healthy (basic) emotion, using the book to discuss anger with children could facilitate their emotion recognition.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0Overall, the project suggests<\/span> that Where the Wild Things Are may be used by parents, caregivers, and teachers <\/span>as a tool <\/span>to help children recognise basic emotions<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Find more about the Kent author here About\u202f\u00a0 This project investigated whether Maurice Sendak\u2019s picture book Where the Wild Things Are can be used as a means of emotion recognition in preschool children. The book has been praised for its ability to capture intense emotions, particularly anger, however, this had not been tested empirically before. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2832,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/2832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}