A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
How do early family systems predict emotion recognition in middle childhood?
Authors: Laamanen Petra, Kiuru Noora, Flykt Marjo, Vänskä Mervi, Hietanen Jari K, Peltola Mikko J, Kurkela Enni, Poikkeus Piia, Tiitinen Aila, Lindblom Jallu
Publisher: WILEY
Publication year: 2022
Journal: Social Development
Journal name in source: SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Journal acronym: SOC DEV
Volume: 31
Issue: 1
First page : 196
Last page: 211
Number of pages: 16
ISSN: 0961-205X
eISSN: 1467-9507
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12526
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/66657219
Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental element in human interaction. It begins to develop soon after birth and is important in achieving developmental tasks of middle childhood, such as developing mutual friendships and acquiring social rules of peer groups. Despite its importance, FER research during middle childhood continues to be rather limited. Moreover, research is ambiguous on how the quality of one's early social-emotional environment shapes FER development, and longitudinal studies spanning from infancy to later development are scarce. In this study, we examine how the cohesive, authoritarian, disengaged and enmeshed family system types, assessed during pregnancy and infancy, predict children's FER accuracy and interpretative biases towards happiness, fear, anger and sadness at the age of 10 years (N = 79). The results demonstrated that children from disengaged families (i.e., highly distressed relationships) show superior FER accuracy to those from cohesive families (i.e., harmonious and stable relationships). Regarding interpretative biases, children from cohesive families showed a greater fear bias compared to children from disengaged families. Our findings suggest that even in a relatively low-risk population, variation in the quality of children's early family relationships may shape children's subsequent FER development, perhaps as an evolution-based adaptation to their social-emotional environment.
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