Abstract
Poverty exposure has been linked to difficulties in emotion expression recognition, which further increases risks for negative emotional outcomes among children. The current study aimed to investigate whether the difficulties in emotion expression recognition among children experiencing poverty may be emotion specific or expression intensity specific. Thus, the current study investigated the relationship between poverty exposure and emotion labeling ability in an ethnically and economically diverse sample of children (N = 46) in middle childhood. A novel experimental design measured emotion labeling ability at different valences of emotion (fearful, angry, and happy) and at varying intensities (0–100%) of emotion presentation. Using a hierarchical logistic regression, we found a significant interaction between the percentage of time since birth a child has lived in poverty and the intensity of the emotional stimulus in affecting correct emotion identification. Children who lived longer in poverty gained less accuracy for equivalent increases in intensity compared with children who had not lived in poverty. On average, children who chronically lived in poverty required emotional intensity set at 60% in order to reach levels of accuracy observed at 30% intensity among children who were never exposed to poverty. We found no significant emotion-specific effect. These findings demonstrate that children who experience chronic poverty require more intense expressions to recognize emotions across valences. This further elaborates the existing understanding of a relationship between poverty exposure and emotion recognition, informing future studies examining expression recognition as a mechanism involved in developing psychopathology.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-140 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Child Psychology |
| Volume | 180 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development ( R21HD078797 and R01 HD090068 ); the Professional Research Opportunity for Faculty and Faculty Research Fund, University of Denver; and the Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children’s Mental Health Research, Society for Research in Child Development. Thanks go to Daniel Mason, Christian Capistrano, Hannah Bianco, Laura Jeske, Daniel Bartholomew, Naomi Wallace, Nanxi Xu, and Christina Congleton for their help in recruitment, data collection, and data entry. Portions of this research were presented in poster form at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX, and at the 2017 meeting of the International Network for Research on Inequalities in Child Health, Cornell, NY. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in the research.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21HD078797 and R01 HD090068); the Professional Research Opportunity for Faculty and Faculty Research Fund, University of Denver; and the Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children's Mental Health Research, Society for Research in Child Development. Thanks go to Daniel Mason, Christian Capistrano, Hannah Bianco, Laura Jeske, Daniel Bartholomew, Naomi Wallace, Nanxi Xu, and Christina Congleton for their help in recruitment, data collection, and data entry. Portions of this research were presented in poster form at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX, and at the 2017 meeting of the International Network for Research on Inequalities in Child Health, Cornell, NY. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in the research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Inc.
Keywords
- Chronic poverty exposure
- Emotion labeling
- Emotion labeling ability
- Intensity
- Middle childhood
- Poverty