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New Directions in the Study of Human Emotional Development

August 23, 2019

Guest editors Seth Pollak, Linda Camras, and Pamela Cole discuss the issue's significance and practical implications.

Note: To further stimulate the scholarly exchange of ideas around this topic, Developmental Psychology invites readers to submit commentaries or reactions on any article or set of articles in the special issue. Commentaries should be written in the spirit of friendly exchange of ideas that help spur the next generation research and will be published together in a forthcoming issue of the journal. Submissions are due October 15, 2019. If interested, send an email to the Editor's Office or Seth Pollak .

What is the special issue about?

This special issue of Developmental Psychology highlights new directions in the study of human emotional development, setting an agenda for a next generation of research questions for the field. Together, the papers address novel theory, approaches, methodology, and new empirical evidence.

Major innovative topics ask these questions:

• What is the nature of human emotion?
• How do emotional behaviors emerge through children's interactions with their cultures and environment?
• How do humans come to understand and use emotion signals and categories?
• What are the neural mechanisms underlying how we learn about and learn to regulate emotions, and are they specific to emotion?
• Do interpretations of classic studies in the field and commonly used measurement methods hold up to more contemporary views of emotion?

This special issue motivates new directions to tackle these and other basic questions in the study of emotional development for the 21st century.

What is the significance of the issue?

Research on infants' and children's emotions blossomed between the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. This surge established that a full understanding of human development requires more than understanding physical growth, achievements in thinking, and becoming a social person; it also requires understanding how we feel, how we understand and communicate our feelings and those of others, and how emotion penetrates so many aspects of human development.

Why? Emotions are the way we evaluate the significance of circumstances for our goals and prepare to act to maintain or regain them.

While the study of emotional development has increasingly captured the attention of many researchers, our understanding of emotional development is still undergoing change.

Despite so much interest and excitement, our knowledge of various aspects of emotion hit some key barriers:

• We discovered there was no agreement on what emotion is
• We realized that we may have ideas and use terms that we seem to readily understand but may lack evidence or be based on incorrect assumptions
• We became aware that emotions are not facial expressions or heart rate patterns; what we see in an expression or feel in a moment is but a glimpse of a complex, underlying dynamic process

New questions are being raised regarding what constitutes emotion; new frameworks for understanding the neurobiological systems underlying emotion across species are recasting what needs to be understood about the emergence of biological mechanisms underlying emotion, and new approaches to understanding learning are being applied to emotion.

And, increasingly, those who raise and work with children seek evidence that contributes to raising healthy children and helping children confronted with adversities and struggling in life.

We realized there is a world of interesting questions that remain to be asked, and that it was time to inspire a new generation of research.

These challenges call for a new wave of thinking and research on emotional development — time for a special issue!

Tell us about a few key takeaways.

When Eric Dubow, editor of Developmental Psychology , approached us about organizing this special issue, he told us that he felt it had been some time since the topic had been brought to the attention of a wider audience. In addition, we felt the field was ripe for some challenging new ideas.

Indeed, the call for this special issue drew a response that far exceeded what we expected (and set a record for the journal), suggesting that interest and activity in the field is very high. We selected papers that highlight novel perspectives; gave an opportunity to authors whose primary expertise was not in emotional development, emotion, or developmental psychology as long as they offered fresh perspectives that could generate new research ideas in emotional development; and sought contributions from scholars representing a range of different disciplinary, cultural, global, and theoretical viewpoints.

In considering the past and future of research on emotional development, we identified three areas in which novel advances have the potential to be made:

• New ways to conceptualize emotion and emotional development
• New ways to understand how and why emotions change over development
• New methods for exploring emotion and emotional development

There are so many opportunities for young researchers to pursue any number of interesting and important questions regarding emotional development. We want to inspire young scholars to generate and explore new ideas and new research directions by providing examples in this issue.

Special Issue

• View the table of contents with abstracts on APA PsycNET
• Purchase the special issue

Note: This article is in the Developmental Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Developmental Psychology topic area.

About the Guest Editors

Seth Pollak is the Letters & Science Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A former recipient of the Boyd-McCandless Award, his research focuses on the influences of environmental risk factors on children's brain and behavioral development, with particular focus on emotions and learning.

Linda Camras is Professor Emerita at DePaul University. She studies emotional expression and emotional development across cultures, with particular interest in the developmental origins and meaning of emotions across cultures.

Pamela Cole is Liberal Arts Professor of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University. Her joint training in clinical and developmental psychology has motivated her research on early childhood emotion regulation.

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Social & Emotional Development: For Our Youngest Learners & Beyond

You are here

Perhaps more than ever, mental health and social interactions have been on the minds of many over the past year. A pandemic, ongoing systemic injustices, and a contentious political season combined to create uncertainty and stress for adults and children alike. What do these stressors mean for the mental health of our youngest learners? In what ways can early childhood educators nurture the social and emotional lives and learning of children from birth through age 8?

This issue of  Young Children  offers research-supported responses to these questions with a cluster of articles devoted to intentional practices that promote social and emotional development: The first four articles in this cluster focus on the specific social and emotional needs of infants and toddlers, and the development of these important articles represents a unique collaboration between NAEYC and ZERO TO THREE to collectively concentrate our respective journals on the emotional health of infants and toddlers.

The catalyst for this issue was threefold:

• the shared interest in supporting the early childhood education workforce to have the resources and tools necessary for meeting the needs of the youngest children in their care
• the understanding that social and emotional development is critical to learning and a fundamental aspect of infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH)
• the recognition of the power of collaboration to elevate the vital role of early childhood educators in supporting IECMH

Mary Jane Maguire-Fong opens this  Young Children  cluster with “What Babies Ask of Us: Contexts to Support Learning about Self and Other.” She details how early childhood educators can listen to, observe, and guide infants and toddlers through thoughtfully prepared play spaces, daily routines, and everyday interactions. In “‘You’re Okay’ May Not be Okay: Using Emotion Language to Promote Toddlers’ Social and Emotional Development,” Elizabeth K. King harnesses that keen awareness and planning to outline how educators can use anti-oppressive emotion language strategies with toddlers.

Tapping into these same powers of observation and reflection, Claire Vallotton, Jennifer Mortensen, Melissa Burnham, Kalli Decker, and Marjorie Beeghly present “Becoming a Better Behavior Detective: Applying a Developmental and Contextual Lens on Behavior to Promote Social and Emotional Development.” Educators can use this 5-Step Reflective Cycle to identify and be responsive to infants’ and toddlers’ behaviors and needs. Of course, following these steps depends on our own emotional presence and well-being. In an accompanying piece to this article, Holly Hatton-Bowers and colleagues offer recommendations for “Cultivating Self-Awareness in Our Work with Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families: Caring for Ourselves as We Care for Others.”

Finally, in “When in Doubt, Reach Out: Teaming Strategies for Inclusive Early Childhood Settings,” Christine Spence, Deserai Miller, Catherine Corr, Rosa Milagros Santos, and Brandie Bentley capture how an early childhood educator learns to actively participate in early intervention processes through effective communication and collaboration. This cluster also features a special Rocking and Rolling column defining IECMH and outlining how early childhood educators play a role in fostering infants’ and toddlers’ emotional well-being.

For educators of older children, it is vital to understand that the roots of social and emotional learning begin in infancy. In addition to the cluster articles, you’ll find pieces devoted to social and emotional learning in preschool and elementary settings, including articles that

• outline the ARC framework to help children learn to recognize and manage their emotions, particularly those who have experienced trauma
• describe effective strategies for fostering responsibility in young children
• distinguish between friendship and kindness in preschool settings

The articles in the  ZERO TO THREE Journal  explore a variety of issues related to IECMH in early childhood education settings, including: how infants’ and toddlers’ mental health is paramount to their ability to form healthy relationships, regulate their emotions, and learn; the role of IECMH consultation, the impact of COVID, and equity and power dynamics; and trauma-informed care and the importance of teachers’ mental health, particularly in the context of multiple, long-term stressors affecting every layer of the early childhood education system and society as a whole. The issue also recognizes the valuable role of advocacy and policy and provides suggestions for how early childhood professionals can bring their expertise to influence effective policy change for babies and families.

We hope that the readers of  Young Children  and the  ZERO TO THREE Journal  will turn to both publications to discover perspectives and find valuable resources to support their work with infants, toddlers, and their families. Links to selected articles from each issue are available on each journal’s web page.

—Annie Moses, editor in chief, with Stefanie Powers, editor in chief,  ZERO TO THREE Journal , and Kathy Reschke, editorial assistant,  ZERO TO THREE Journal

Above: Children in Maureen Linnane’s toddler class used cardboard materials to create a collage.

Below: This piece comes from Chandler, the young toddler son of an NAEYC staff member, as he explored art materials.

Is your classroom full of children’s artwork? To feature it in  Young Children , see the link at the bottom of the page or email  [email protected]  for details.

Send your thoughts on this issue, and on topics you’d like to read about in future issues of Young Children, to  [email protected] .

Would you like to see your children’s artwork featured in these pages? For guidance on submitting print-quality photos (as well as details on permissions and licensing), see  NAEYC.org/resources/pubs/authors-photographers/photos .

Annie Moses, PhD, is director of periodicals at NAEYC and serves as editor in chief of  Young Children  and  Teaching Young Children .

Stephanie Powers is the editor in chief at ZERO TO THREE Journal.

Kathy L. Reschke, PhD, is senior content specialist for ZERO TO THREE. Dr. Reschke contributes to the design and development of competency-based professional development products and services. She developed the content for the ZERO TO THREE Critical Competencies for Infant-Toddler Educators™ course manuals, online course, and coaching program. [email protected]

Vol. 76, No. 1

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Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues

Carroll e. izard.

Psychology Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716-2577; email: ude.ledu.hcysp@drazi

Emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity, the key component of emotions and emotion-cognition interactions. Emotion schemas, the most frequently occurring emotion experiences, are dynamic emotion-cognition interactions that may consist of momentary/ situational responding or enduring traits of personality that emerge over developmental time. Emotions play a critical role in the evolution of consciousness and the operations of all mental processes. Types of emotion relate differentially to types or levels of consciousness. Unbridled imagination and the ability for sympathetic regulation of empathy may represent both potential gains and losses from the evolution and ontogeny of emotion processes and consciousness. Unresolved issues include psychology’s neglect of levels of consciousness that are distinct from access or reflective consciousness and use of the term “unconscious mind” as a dumpster for all mental processes that are considered unreportable. The relation of memes and the mirror neuron system to empathy, sympathy, and cultural influences on the development of socioemotional skills are unresolved issues destined to attract future research.

INTRODUCTION

This prefatory chapter, like every essay, review, or data-based article, is influenced by its author’s feelings about the topics and issues under consideration as well as the author’s personality and social and cultural experiences. To help counterbalance the effects of such influences on this article and provide some perspective on its contents, I present below the major theses that have emerged in my theorizing and research on emotions.

THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

The key principles of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard 2007a ) have changed periodically. They change primarily because of advances in methodology and research. They may also change as a result of theoretical debates that highlight the need for some clarifications and distinctions among constructs. The current set of principles highlight distinctly different types of emotions and their roles in the evolution and development of different levels of consciousness/awareness and of mind, human mentality, and behavior. The ongoing reformulations of DET principles are facilitated by advances in emotion science, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental clinical science, as well as in social and personality psychology. For the present article, the seven principles below guided the choice of topics and the selective review of the literature on emotions and their relations to cognition, action, and consciousness. They led to a new perspective on emotion-related gains and losses from evolution and opened the door to theoretical development and research on emerging topics such as the role of the mirror neuron system in emotion experiences, empathy, and sympathy and memes and their relations to emotion schemas.

An overarching aspect of the theoretical perspective represented in the following principles and in this article is that emotion and cognition, though often treated correctly as having functionally separate features and influences (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000 , Talmi & Frith 2007 ), are interactive and integrated or mingled in the brain (cf. Lewis 2005 , Pessoa 2008 , Phelps 2006 ). This thesis is consistent with the long-standing recognition of the high degree of connectivity among the brain’s neural structures and systems. I hypothesize that emotion will have substantial and measurable effects on cognition and action when the stimulus or situation is a personally or socially significant one. The foregoing general thesis and the more specific hypothesis seem to run counter to extreme constructivist positions. Such positions (e.g., Barrett 2006 ) define or locate emotion at the level of perception and apparently have no place for the idea of interactions among distinct features of emotion (e.g., motivation/feeling) and cognition (e.g., higher-order conceptual processes). The present position may bear some similarity to componential–dynamic approaches, at least in terms of continuously changing aspects or configurations of mental processes (e.g., Ellsworth 1994 , Scherer 2000 ). However, the present position may differ from the latter in viewing emotion and cognition as always interacting and thus normally precluding pure cognitive and emotion states.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES

• Emotion feeling ( a ) derives from evolution and neurobiological development, ( b ) is the key psychological component of emotions and consciousness, and ( c ) is more often inherently adaptive than maladaptive.
• Emotions play a central role in the evolution of consciousness, influence the emergence of higher levels of awareness during ontogeny, and largely determine the contents and focus of consciousness throughout the life span.
• Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.
• Basic emotion feelings help organize and motivate rapid (and often more-or-less automatic though malleable) actions that are critical for adaptive responses to immediate challenges to survival or wellbeing. In emotion schemas, the neural systems and mental processes involved in emotion feelings, perception, and cognition interact continually and dynamically in generating and monitoring thought and action. These dynamic interactions (which range from momentary processes to traits or trait-like phenomena) can generate innumerable emotion-specific experiences (e.g., anger schemas) that have the same core feeling state but different perceptual tendencies (biases), thoughts, and action plans.
• Emotion utilization, typically dependent on effective emotion-cognition interactions, is adaptive thought or action that stems, in part, directly from the experience of emotion feeling/motivation and in part from learned cognitive, social, and behavioral skills.
• Emotion schemas become maladaptive and may lead to psychopathology when learning results in the development of connections among emotion feelings and maladaptive cognition and action.
• The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes.

Elaboration and empirical support for principles 1–6 can be found in the following sources and their reference lists ( Ackerman et al. 1998 ; Izard 2002 , 2007a ; Izard et al. 2008a , b , c ; Silvia 2006 ). Principles 1–3 apply to all emotions, and 4–6 primarily concern emotion schemas. Principle 7 consists of propositions about the most ubiquitous of all human emotions—interest-excitement. Specific empirical support does not exist for the hypothesis of continual interest in the normal mind.

In this article, I discuss the issues of defining the term “emotion” and types of emotion, emotion-cognition interactions, emotions and consciousness, relations among types of emotions and types of consciousness, and note some remarkable gains and losses from the evolution of emotions and multiple levels consciousness.

This article addresses a critical need for clear distinctions between basic positive and basic negative emotions and particularly between brief basic emotion episodes and emotion schemas. Unlike basic negative emotions that occur in brief episodes and involve very little cognition beyond minimal perceptual processes, emotion schemas involve emotion and cognition (frequently higher-order cognition) in dynamic interactions ( Izard 1977 , 1984 ; cf. emotional interpretation, Lewis 2005 ).

This article also contrasts phenomenal (primary) and access (reflective) consciousness, considers the construct of levels of consciousness, and questions the integrity of current conceptualizations of the unconscious mind. Typically, psychologists ignore the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and levels of consciousness and do not distinguish these constructs from the unconscious. I conclude by identifying some unanswered questions and briefly comment on a few emerging topics—continuous emotion-cognition interactions, memes and emotions, and the mirror neuron system and empathy—that seem destined to become more prominent in psychological science in the coming years.

ON THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS

None of the many efforts to make a widely acceptable definition of emotion has proved successful ( Izard 2006 , Panksepp 2003a ). Yet, I dare once again to raise the 124-year-old storied question asked by James (1884) : What is emotion? It happens that the answer James gave to his own question has a rather popular reprieve in the annals of contemporary neuroscience. Like James, Damasio (1999) argued that brain responses constitute emotion or the body expression of emotion and that emotion feeling is a consequence of the neurobiological (body) expression. In contrast, I propose that emotion feeling should be viewed as a phase (not a consequence) of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ).

The Origins of Emotions

Russell (2003) proposed that core affect is continuous in the brain and provides information on the pleasure/displeasure and arousal value of stimuli. In contrast, I have maintained that a discrete emotion or pattern of interacting emotions are always present (though not necessarily labeled or articulated) in the conscious brain ( Izard 1977 , ch. 6; Izard 2007a , b ). Barrett (2006) suggested that discrete emotions arise as a result of a conceptual act on core affect or as a function of “conceptual structure that is afforded by language” ( Barrett et al. 2007 , p. 304). In contrast, we have proposed that discrete emotion feelings cannot be created, taught, or learned via cognitive processes ( Izard & Malatesta 1987 ; Izard 2007a , b ). As Edelman & Tononi (2000) observed, “… emotions are fundamental both to the origins of and the appetite for conscious thought” (p. 218, cf. Izard 1977 , ch. 6). So, perceptual and conceptual processes and consciousness itself are more like effects of emotions than sources of their origin. Discrete emotion experiences emerge in ontogeny well before children acquire language or the conceptual structures that adequately frame the qualia we know as discrete emotion feelings. Moreover, acquiring language does not guarantee that emotion experiences can always be identified and communicated verbally. Even adults have great difficulty articulating a precise description of their emotion feelings (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ).

Thus, emotion feelings can be activated and influenced by perceptual, appraisal, conceptual, and noncognitive processes ( Izard 1993 ), but cannot be created by them. In describing the origins of qualia—conscious experiences that include emotion feelings— Edelman & Tononi (2000) wrote, “We can analyze them and give prescription for how they emerge, but obviously we cannot give rise to them without first giving rise to appropriate brain structures and their dynamics within the body of an individual organism” (p. 15). They maintained that such structures arise as a result of brain changes due to “developmental selection” (p. 79), an aspect of neural Darwinism. Eschewing the cognitive-constructivist approach advocated by Barrett (2006) , Edelman & Tononi (2000) concluded that “the development of the earliest qualia occurs largely on the basis of multimodal, bodycentered discriminations carried out by proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and autonomic systems that are present in the embryo and infant’s brain, particularly in the brainstem” (p. 157).

Emotion Feeling as Neurobiological Activity

Apparently consistent with the position of Edelman (2006) , Langer (1967/1982) , and Panksepp (2003a , b ), I propose that emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity that is sensed by the organism. It is sensed and expressed even in children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007 ). This component of emotion is always experienced or felt, though not necessarily labeled or articulated or present in access consciousness.

Emotion feeling, like any other neurobiological activity, varies from low to high levels of intensity. The autonomic nervous system may modulate the emotion feeling but does not change its quality or valence (cf. Tomkins 1962 , 1963 ). Neither a moderate nor a high level of autonomic nervous system activity is necessary for the emergence of emotion feelings. The conscious mind is capable of detecting and discriminating among slight changes in neurobiological activity and among the resultant qualia ( Edelman 2006 ) that include emotion feelings. [Contrary to earlier formulations ( Izard 1971 , Tomkins 1962 ), neural processes in observable facial expressions may or may not be a part of the critical neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling.]

Emotion feelings arise from the integration of concurrent activity in brain structures and circuits that may involve the brain stem, amygdale, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortices (cf. Damasio 2003 ; Lane et al. 1997 ; Panksepp 2003a , b ). Levels of emotion feelings, like other neurobiological activities, range from low and subtle to high and extreme. Current theory and evidence suggest that the feeling component of emotions contributed to the evolution of consciousness and to the affective, cognitive, and action processes involved in goal-oriented behavior.

Defining emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process circumvents the argument that feeling is nonphysical and hence cannot be causal. A counterargument, though, is that at best, feelings are only the qualia of neurobiological processes and not neurobiological activity per se. However, even if this were true, Edelman (2006) maintains that qualia could still be described as causal because they are true representations of core thalamo-cortical activity. Thus, whether or not one accepts the present proposal that feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity, they can still be conceived as causal processes.

The present formulation of the origins and nature of emotion feelings differs from those that describe emotion feeling and emotion state (or emotion-related neurobiological activity) as separate and independent (e.g., Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). Moreover, the view of emotion feeling as a phase of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion differs from the idea that neurobiological or body expression must precede emotion feeling ( Damasio 1999 , p. 283). The current description of emotion feeling is tantamount to saying that it is evolved and unlearned neurobiological activity. For those who think that the idea of emotion feelings as evolved neurobiological processes is strange or unfounded, the tough questions are: Where else could emotion feelings come from? What else could they be?

Feeling is the Key Psychological Aspect of Emotion: Motivation and Information

Feeling is the dynamic component in emotion (cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ) and in two related psychobiological processes—entrainment and individuation (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). The motivational, cue-producing, and informational functions of feelings enable them to entrain, or simplify and organize, what might become (particularly in challenging situations) an overwhelming number of impulses into focused cognitive processes and a few adaptive actions (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Such feeling-mediated entrainment of impulses across situations and developmental time facilitates the formation of feeling-cognition-action patterns that constitute individuation—the organization of traits and their assembly into a unique personality. However, feeling an emotion does not guarantee that it will be labeled, articulated, or sensed in reflective consciousness or at a high level of awareness. The level of awareness of an emotion feeling depends in part on its intensity and expression, and after language acquisition, on labeling, articulating, and acknowledging the emotion experience. These capacities, critical to personality and social development, depend on the neural activity and resultant processes involved in symbolization and language.

Through development, the conceptual self becomes important to the process of feeling and expressing an emotion, but a higher-order conceptual “self ” is not essential for either. Infants experience and express basic emotions long before they can provide any evidence of a self-concept ( Izard et al. 1995 ), and so do children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007 ).

Motivational and cue-producing emotion-feeling provides information relevant to cognition and action ( Izard 1971 , p. 185). Others have conceptualized emotion as information, and the topic has inspired a considerable body of related research ( Clore et al. 2001 , Schwarz & Clore 1983 ). Consistent with the idea that emotion feelings are cue-producing and informational phenomena, they may also afford a kind of prescience. Feelings may predict the effect of future stimulations by anticipating the link between future critical situations and subsequent emotion experiences and needs, e.g., danger→fear→safety or loss→sadness→social support (cf. Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 101). Such anticipatory activities can facilitate the socialization processes associated with the learning of emotion-related social skills in an imagined or “as if ” world.

Although an emotion feeling may begin to form reciprocal relations with perception or cognition by the time that it is fully sensed, there is no reason to assume that its quality is altered by perceptual and conceptual processes ( Panksepp 2003a , b ). Actually, the particular quality of each discrete emotion feeling evolved because its effects on other senses, cognition, and action are generally adaptive (cf. Edelman & Tononi 2000 ). For all basic emotions, motivational and action processes occur in similar fashion across situations. Among emotion schemas, however, there are wide differences in motivational, cognitive, and action processes across individuals. The determinants of which particular emotion feeling and what cognitive content occurs in a specific emotion schema include individual differences, learning, culture, and the conceptual processes influenced by them ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Shweder 1994 ).

Agreement on Components and Characteristics of Emotion

Though there is no consensus on a general definition of the term “emotion” (cf. Kleinginna & Kleinginna 1981 ), many experts do agree that emotions have a limited set of components and characteristics ( Izard 2006 ). Although they do not agree in all details, they agree that emotions have an infrastructure that includes neural systems dedicated, at least in part, to emotion processes and that emotions motivate cognition and action and recruit response systems. We may also be reaching a consensus that there are different forms of emotions, e.g., basic emotions rooted and defined primarily in evolution and biology and emotion schemas that include cognitive components that differ across individuals and cultures ( Izard 2007a , Panksepp 2007 ).

Emotions as Causal Processes

Although experts agree that emotions motivate or influence cognition and action, not all agree on precisely what mediates the effects of emotions. The answer may depend on whether it is a basic emotion or an emotion schema. It may also depend on whether and how a distinction is made in the roles of emotion neurophysiology and emotion feelings (cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ).

Arguably, no one thing (even emotion) is ever the sole mediator of personally or socially significant behavior. Other person and contextual variables typically contribute to the causal processes. Yet, I propose that emotion feeling is virtually always one of the mediators of action in response to basic emotion and a mediator of thought and action in response to emotion schemas. Thus, the specific impact of emotion feeling in generating and altering behavior depends on the type of emotion involved in the causal process. Feeling in basic emotion affects action but not higher-order cognition, which has little or no presence in basic emotion processes. Feeling in emotion schemas may frequently affect action and will surely affect cognition. Thinking is a key agent in regulating (sometimes suppressing; Gross 2002 ) and guiding behavior that stems from emotion schemas.

TYPES OF EMOTIONS

Emotions can be usefully divided into two broad types or kinds—basic emotion episodes and dynamic emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas. Failure to make and keep the distinction between these two kinds of emotion experiences may be the biggest source of misunderstandings and misconceptions in current emotion science ( Izard 2007a , Gray et al. 2005 ). I included an update on the distinction between types of emotions here for two reasons. First, I see the fundamental nature of emotions and the closely connected issue of emotion-cognition-action processes as central to emotion science, now and for the foreseeable future. Second, I think researchers often look for the correlates and effects of basic emotions (labeled simply as emotions) when the variables in their experiments are actually emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas.

Basic Emotions

In the past, I have used the term “basic emotion” in referring to any emotion that is assumed to be fundamental to human mentality and adaptive behavior ( Izard 1977 ). Recently, misunderstandings and debates about its meaning led me to draw a sharp distinction between basic emotions and affective-cognitive structures or emotion schemas ( Izard 2007a ). Here, consistent with that distinction, the term “basic emotion” refers to affective processes generated by evolutionarily old brain systems upon the sensing of an ecologically valid stimulus ( Izard 2007a ).

Basic positive emotions

The basic positive emotions of interest and joy (e.g., an infant’s interest activated by the human face; Langsdorf et al. 1983 ) and joy activated by the familiar face of her mother ( Izard et al. 1995 ) are equally essential to survival, evolution, and development. However, their structure and time course may differ significantly from each other. The infant’s experiences of joy may be relatively brief by comparison with experiences of interest. The basic positive emotion of interest motivates play in early development and thus may have short or relatively long duration.

Basic positive emotions emerge in early ontogeny ( Izard et al. 1995 ). Like the basic negative emotions, they are subject to developmental changes. The most critical of these changes is mediated by the acquisition of language and emotion labels and the ability to communicate (or share) emotion experiences through symbolic processes or language ( Izard 1971 , Izard et al. 2008 ).

Basic negative emotions

Basic negative emotions (sadness, anger, disgust, fear) typically run their course automatically and stereotypically in a brief time span. The basic emotion of fear (or a fear-action episode) was described rather precisely in the earliest human records: “A man who stumbles upon a viper will jump aside: as trembling takes his knees, pallor his cheeks; he backs and backs away …” (Homer’s Iliad , c. 7000 BCE, p. 68).

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that in mammals, the experience and expression of basic fear is mediated by the amygdala ( LeDoux 1996 , Mobbs et al. 2007 ). Typically, basic negative emotions are activated by subcortical sensory-discriminative processes in response to ecologically valid stimuli ( Ekman 2003 , LeDoux 1996 , Öhman 2005 ). Perceptual processes and action usually follow and run their course rapidly and automatically to enhance the likelihood of gaining an adaptive advantage (cf. LeDoux 1996 , Öhman 2002 , Tomkins 1962 ). Because of their nature, some basic negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, fear) are difficult to study in the laboratory. Thus, most extant research on what are usually called emotions (most often negative emotions) actually concerns negative emotion schemas.

Basic or fundamental emotions?

The discrete emotions of shame, guilt, and contempt (sometimes called the social or self-conscious emotions) and the pattern of emotions in love and attachment may be considered basic in the sense that they are fundamental to human evolution, normative development, human mentality, and effective adaptation. After language acquisition, the emotions related to the self-concept or self-consciousness are typically emotion schemas that involve higher-order cognition (e.g., about self and self-other relationships) and have culture-related cognitive components ( Tangney et al. 2007 ).

Emotion Schemas: Dynamic Emotion-Cognition Interactions

The core idea of dynamic interaction between emotion and cognition has a long and venerable history dating back at least to the earliest written records: “… Peleus … lashed out at him, letting his anger ride in execration …” (Homer’s Iliad , c. 7000 BCE). The idea was prominently displayed in seventeenth-century philosophy ( Bacon 1620/1968 , Spinoza 1677/1957 ) and was most eloquently elaborated by Langer (1967/1982) .

In the vernacular, as well as in much of the literature of emotion science, the term “emotion” most frequently refers to what is described here as an emotion schema. An emotion schema is emotion interacting dynamically with perceptual and cognitive processes to influence mind and behavior. Emotion schemas are often elicited by appraisal processes but also by images, memories, and thoughts, and various noncognitive processes such as changes in neurotransmitters and periodic changes in levels of hormones ( Izard 1993 ). Any one or all of these phenomena, as well as goals and values, may constitute their cognitive component. Appraisal processes, typically conceived as mechanisms of emotion activation (for a review, see Ellsworth & Scherer 2003 ), help provide the cognitive framework for the emotion component of emotion schemas. Their principal motivational component of emotion schemas consists of the processes involved in emotion feelings. Emotion schemas, particularly their cognitive aspects, are influenced by individual differences, learning, and social and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, the feeling component of a given emotion schema (e.g., a sadness schema) is qualitatively identical to the feeling in the basic emotion of sadness. Though there may be some differences in their underlying neural processes, the sadness feeling in each type of emotion shares a common set of brain circuits or neurobiological activities that determine its quality (cf. Edelman 2006 , Edelman & Tononi 2000 ).

Positive and negative emotion schemas may have a relatively brief duration or continue over an indefinitely long time course. A principal reason why they can endure more or less indefinitely is because their continually interacting cognitive component provides a means to regulate and utilize them. Evidence indicates that experimentally facilitated formation of emotion schemas (simply learning to label and communicate about emotion feelings) generates adaptive advantages ( Izard et al. 2008a ; cf. Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Although we have very little data relating to their normative development, neuroscientists have begun to increase our knowledge of the substrates of emotion-cognition interactions ( Fox et al. 2005 , Gross 2002 , Lewis 2005 , Northoff et al. 2004 , Phelps 2006 ).

Emotion schemas and traits of temperament/personality

Frequently recurring emotion schemas may stabilize as emotion traits or as motivational components of temperament/ personality traits ( Diener et al. 1995 , Goldsmith & Campos 1982 , Izard 1977 , Magai & Hunziker 1993 , Magai & McFadden 1995 ; cf. Mischel & Shoda 1995 , Tomkins 1987 ). In normal development, the cognitive content of emotion schemas should enhance the regulatory, motivational, and functional capacities of their feeling components. However, in some gene X environment interactions, a cluster of interrelated emotion schemas may become a form of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and depressive disorders: Davidson 1994 , 1998 ; J.A. Gray 1990 ; J.R. Gray et al. 2005 ; Izard 1972 ; Magai & McFadden 1995 ).

Early-emerging emotion schemas

Aside from the simple emotion-cognition connections that a prelinguistic infant forms (e.g., between her own feelings of interest and joy and a perception/image of her mother’s face), the earliest emotion schemas probably consist of attaching labels to emotion expressions and feelings. Development of emotion labeling and the process of putting feelings into words begin toward the end of the second year of life and continue during the preschool and elementary school years ( Izard 1971 ) and throughout the life span. Indeed, games and activities that promote the accurate labeling of emotion expressions and experiences have been a component of intervention processes for many years (see Domitrovich & Greenberg 2004 and Denham & Burton 2003 for reviews).

Emotion schemas or affective-cognitive units?

The concept of affective-cognitive structure or emotion schema ( Izard 1977 , 2007a ) seems quite similar to that of the affective-cognitive unit as described in the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) theory of personality ( Mischel & Shoda 1995 , 1998 ). One significant difference may be that in the CAPS approach, an affective-cognitive unit is conceived mainly as a stable or characteristic mediating process or part of the personality system. In DET, an emotion schema may be either a temporally stable trait-like phenomenon (affective-cognitive structure) or a brief emotion-cognition interaction that may mediate behavior in a specific situation. Compared to the CAPS approach, DET gives emotion a greater role in motivation and assumes that the emotion component of the emotion schema drives the behavior mapped or framed by perceptual-cognitive processes. DET also emphasizes that, as seen particularly clearly in early development and in emotion-based preventive interventions, connecting appropriate cognition to emotion feelings increases the individual’s capacity for emotion modulation and self-regulation ( Izard et al. 2008a ). DET and CAPS agree in assigning a significant causal role to the dynamic interplay of emotion and cognition in determining human behavior. Both approaches also conceptualize the interplay of emotion and cognitive processes as sources of data on ideographic or within-subject differences in emotion-cognition-behavior relations.

In brief, emotion schemas are causal or mediating processes that consist of emotion and cognition continually interacting dynamically to influence mind and behavior. It is the dynamic interaction of these distinct features (emotion and cognition) that enables an emotion schema, acting in the form of a situation-specific factor or a trait of temperament/personality, to have its special and powerful effects on self-regulation and on perception, thought, and action ( Izard et al. 2008a ).

Transitions from Basic Emotions to Emotion Schemas

In early development, the first steps in the transition from basic positive emotions to positive emotion schemas consists simply of the infant using her increasing cognitive and emotion processing capacities to make connections between positive emotion feelings and positive thoughts, memories, and anticipations of people, events, and situations. Through learning and experience, the same stimuli that once elicited a basic positive emotion may become stimuli for positive emotion schemas and greater expectations (cf. Fredrickson 1998 , 2007 ).

Basic negative emotions occur relatively more frequently in infancy than in later development. Moreover, the transition from basic negative emotions to basic negative emotion schemas and the regulatory advantage provided by their cognitive component may prove difficult and challenging. The transition from basic anger (protests) and sadness (withdrawal) of a toddler being separated from mom, to the interest-joy response of a four-year-old being dropped off at kindergarten, may involve several rather stressful times for many children.

For adults, transitions from a basic emotion to an emotion schema may start abruptly but finish smoothly and quickly. Simply sensing that the object in your path and just a step ahead of you is long, round, and moving may activate the basic emotion of fear and the accompanying high-intensity neurobiological reactions. However, if language, learning, and another 50 ms enable you to recognize and label the object as a harmless garden snake (i.e., construct an emotion schema), you might even take it gently into your hands rather than engage in extreme behavior. The concomitant change in neural and neuromotor circuits would constitute a paradigmatic transition across types and valences of emotion and emotion-related phenomena. In this case, one would make a transition from basic fear to interest-cognition-action sequences in a positive emotion schema.

EMOTIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Whatever else it may be, emotion feeling is at bottom sensation. Thus emotion feelings, like other sensations, are by definition processes that are felt or at least accessible (in the broad sense of that term) in some level of consciousness. Level of cognitive development as well as top-down processes, such as attention shifting and focusing, may influence (or preclude) the registration of feeling in reflective or cognitively accessible consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007 ). When that happens, emotion feelings/experiences occur in phenomenal consciousness (or at a low level of awareness). Phenomenal consciousness of an emotion feeling, the experience itself, generally co-occurs with some level of reflective/reportable consciousness (cf. Chalmers 1996 ). Thus, I propose that there are usually interactions among the neural systems that support these two types of consciousness (cf. Pessoa 2008 ). These interactions between the two sets of neural systems enable emotion feelings to retain their functionality in influencing thought and action, even in prelingual infants ( Izard et al. 2008b ).

Factors Affecting Emotion-Consciousness Relations

Another determinant of our level of awareness of emotion is the intensity of the neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling. Low-intensity emotion feeling (e.g., interest arousal motivating learning skills related to aspects of one’s work) would not ordinarily grab attention in the same way as a viper and might go unnoticed. In this case (and in other instances of low arousal), “unnoticed” does not mean that the feeling is “unconscious.” It may register and be fully functional at some level of consciousness (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). The development of theory and techniques to examine the operations of emotion feelings in different levels of awareness should help reduce the number of psychological processes that are currently relegated to the ambiguous concept of the unconscious ( Izard et al. 2008b ; cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008 ).

Emotion Feelings and Consciousness

As the foregoing formulation suggests, the neurobiological processes involved in emotions generate conscious experiences of feelings (emotional sensations) just as in seeing green neurobiological activities in the visual brain create the experience/sensation of greenness (cf. Humphrey 2006 ). The sensory processes involved in emotion feelings like joy, sadness, anger, and fear may represent prototypical emotion experiences. Such emotion feelings are critical to the evolution of human mentality and reflective consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

Emotion experiences/sensations continue to be critical in the maintenance and functioning of consciousness. When trauma leads to damage or dysfunction of a sensory system, it affects the whole person, including the sense of self and of others as self-conscious. For example, when a dysfunctional visual cortex resulted in blindsight, the blindsighted person could guess rather accurately the location of objects in the environment and learn to navigate around them. Yet, she experienced her sensation-less vision as emotionless and reported that “seeing without emotion is unbearable” ( Humphrey 2006 , p. 68–69). She may also think of herself as “less of a self ” and one that could not feel “engaged in the ‘hereness, nowness, and me-ness’ of the experience of the moment” ( Humphrey 2006 , p. 70). In the social world, the blind-sighted person lacks a basis for empathy and for understanding the mental states of others by simulation.

Taken together, these observations on the aftermath of the loss of the visual sensory system (which provides the bulk of our incoming information) suggest that having sensations may be the starting point of consciousness ( Humphrey 2006 , pp. 66–71). The emergence of the capacity to experience and respond to emotion feelings may have been the most critical step in its evolution (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Discrete emotion feelings play a central role in anticipating the effects of future stimulations and in organizing and integrating the associated information for envisioning strategies and entraining impulses for targeted goal-directed cognitive processes and actions. The coalescence of the emotion-driven anticipatory processes, entrainment (organizing and integrative processes), and the resultant individuation and sense of agency may have constituted the dawn of human consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Humphrey 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

TYPES OF EMOTION AND TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The concepts of consciousness and awareness have received very little attention in contemporary psychology. With a few exceptions, the contributors to a recently edited volume on emotion and consciousness dealt with many interesting issues other than some critical ones on the nature of consciousness and its relation to emotions ( Barrett et al. 2005b ). Most contributors explicitly or implicitly assumed that access or reflective consciousness was either the only kind of consciousness or the only one that mattered to psychologists (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 , Merker 2007 ).

Basic Emotions and Phenomenal Consciousness

It is quite reasonable to assume that human infants (and all nonhuman mammals; Panksepp 2003a , b ) have some form of consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ). Wider acceptance of this notion should save young infants a lot of pain. Various invasive procedures (including circumcisions and needle pricks to draw blood for analyses) are still performed without analgesic. The facial expression of infants undergoing such procedures constitutes the prototypical expression of pain. With increasing age, the prototypical expression of pain in response to these procedures alternates with the prototypical expression of anger ( Izard et al. 1987 ).

Developmental data suggest that young infants experience basic emotions ( Izard et al. 1995 ). Their inability to report their emotion experiences via language rules out the idea that they experience emotions in access (verbally reportable) consciousness and suggests that their emotion feelings must occur in some other level of awareness or in phenomenal consciousness. Current conceptualizations of phenomenal consciousness, however, may not explain all emotion experiences in infancy ( Izard et al. 2008b ).

Developmental scientists have obtained evidence that shows that prelinguistic infants not only experience objects and events, but they also respond to and communicate nonverbally about objects and events in meaningful ways ( Izard et al. 2008b ). Moreover, their experience often involves emotion that is indexed by emotion-expressive behavior and other forms of action that influence the social and physical world ( Claxton et al. 2003 , Izard et al. 1995 ). Apparently, these behaviors reflect the development of different levels or complexities of awareness, and further studies of them may offer possibilities of extending current conceptualizations of ways to access phenomenological experiences. These experiences do not fit precisely into the categories of “phenomenal” or “access” consciousness as traditionally defined. Yet these experiences are surely part of the infant’s phenomenology, and the functionality of these experiential processes clearly demonstrates that they are accessible by noncognitive routes ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ; cf. Block 2008).

Emotion Feelings and Phenomenal Consciousness

The conceptualization of emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process is congruent with the idea that emotions can be sensed and registered in phenomenal consciousness and at low levels of awareness without being perceived. Such emotion feelings are often described erroneously, I think, as unconscious emotion (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). What may be unconscious is not the feeling but the perception of the feeling, and this lack of perception could account for the failure of the feeling to register in access consciousness. Insofar as emotion feeling is at bottom sensation, then generating a feeling ipso facto generates a state of consciousness. Thus, an emotion feeling always registers in phenomenal consciousness. Often, if not always, it also registers in some other level of consciousness that is accessible by various routes. After language acquisition, emotion feelings can often (but not always) be reported via symbolic processes. In prelingual infants, young children, and others with insufficient emotion vocabulary, it may be manifested in emotion-mediated behavior (cf. Izard et al. 2008b ). Evidence suggests that emotion feelings are operative and expressible via facial and body movement and other behavior even when not reportable (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

Happily, an enormous amount of information processing proceeds very well in the realm of the unconscious, but I propose that the functionality of emotion feelings (that are not in access or reflective consciousness) might be explained better in terms of phenomenal or other levels of consciousness. The term “unconscious” emotion implies nonfelt emotion. It seems very difficult if not impossible to identify and explain the mediators of the effects of nonfelt or nonconscious emotion (e.g., de Gelder 2005 ). Much of what has been called nonconscious emotion has not met the “requirement of deliberate probing by indirect measures” ( Lambie & Marcel 2002 , p. 16). Nor have data on unconscious emotions been examined in terms of the functional correlates of hypothesized emotion feelings. Such research might suggest replacing the concept of psychological unconscious with that of phenomenal consciousness or some other level of consciousness that cannot be verbally reported.

The concept of unlabeled, unarticulated, and linguistically inaccessible emotion feeling in phenomenal consciousness or some other cognitively inaccessible level of consciousness is compatible with the notion that this component of emotion is felt and functions as a mediator of behavior (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Izard et al. 2008b , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). Because it is felt, the emotion feeling retains its characteristic motivational and informational qualities. To say that the feeling component of emotion can reside unfelt in phenomenal consciousness, any other level of consciousness, or the unconscious seems to be a pure non sequitur.

To acknowledge that the subjective component of emotion is felt and real in phenomenal and other cognitively inaccessible levels of consciousness may inspire theory and research on how an emotion feeling remains functional and motivational without being symbolized and made accessible in reflective consciousness via language. Evidence of the functionality of emotion feelings in prelingual infants and children without a cerebral cortex seems to support the argument for more research on the functionality of emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. So do the observations that patients who suffer blindsight report feelings without having corresponding visual experiences ( Weiskrantz 2001 ). On the other hand, subjects with blindsight can perceive objects and make accurate perceptual judgments without any corresponding sensation or feeling at all ( Humphrey 2006 ). The extent to which these seemingly disparate observations on people with blindsight inform normative relations among perception, sensation, and emotion feelings is not yet clear. Neither are the effects and limits of top-down control of sensation in relation to perception and to emotion feelings and their registration at some level of consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007 ).

Emotion Schemas and Access Consciousness

Emotion feelings can operate in phenomenal consciousness with little or no cognitive content. This fact is easy to appreciate while remembering that phenomenal experience is the modal variety in prelingual infants and nonhuman mammals. Although prelingual infants apparently demonstrate higher levels of awareness than phenomenal consciousness, they definitely cannot exhibit reflective consciousness as traditionally defined in terms of cognitive accessibility.

Once development enables emotion experiences to become connected to higher-order cognition, children begin to link emotion feelings and concepts and to form more and more complex emotion schemas. The language associated with a given emotion feeling in particular situations becomes a tool in emotion management, self-regulation, and other executive functions ( Izard et al. 2008a ).

Gains and Losses in the Evolution of Emotions and Consciousness

Darwin recognized many turns in evolution that pointed to the seeming cruelty of natural selection—life-threatening parasites, killer reptiles, and the bloody work of predators ( Dawkins 1989 ). He also recognized the adaptive advantages in positive emotions and their expressions in social interactions: “… the mother smiles approval, and thus encourages her children on the right path, or frowns disapproval” ( Darwin 1872/1965 , p. 304). Gains related in some way to the emotions and their interactions with perception and cognition may represent the finest—and possibly most challenging—products of evolution.

Among the finest and most interesting products of evolution was gaining the capacity for language and eventually the learning of vocabulary for labeling emotions and describing and sharing emotion experiences. These gains also helped enable humans to anticipate future desirable and undesirable emotion feelings. Taken together, these newly emerged capacities represent enormous gains in executive functions, particularly for understanding and managing emotions and self-regulation ( Izard 2002 , Izard et al. 2008a ). They have direct and indirect benefits for the cognitive and action processes involved in adaptive idiosyncratic and social functioning ( Izard et al. 2008b , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Some have argued that the enormous gains that resulted from brain evolution, the acquisition of language, and the accompanying increases in cognitive abilities did not come without some accompanying losses ( Langer 1967/1982 ).

A possible loss: the evolutionary empathy-sympathy exchange

Basic empathy depends mainly on neurophysiological response systems that do not require or involve the higher-order cognitive processes involved in sympathy ( Hoffman 2000 ). Thus, long before human evolution produced language and its accompanying cognitive prowess, a high-level of ability for empathy and empathic responding emerged in nonhuman animals ( Langer 1967/1982 ). This great capacity for empathy apparently accounts for the lack of con-specific predation and cannibalism among nonhuman mammals. “Among the higher animals few, if any, of the carnivores—bears, wolves, lions and other great cats—habitually prey on their own kind” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 141). They are restrained from predation, not by signals of appeasement or surrender, but by “a ready empathetic response, so common and effective that it takes no principle, moral or other, to safeguard the members of a species against each other’s appetites in ordinary conditions” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 142).

The animal empathy that constitutes a safeguard against con-specific predation establishes a special kind of relationship that enables an essentially physiological transmission of the “feeling of one creature to another so it appears to the latter as its own” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 140). In contrast, as the media are wont to remind us through blow-by-blow accounts of flagrantly aggressive and ethically and morally devious behavior, humans prey on each other with considerable frequency. And such predation often leads to death and destruction, even genocide. Furthermore, although cannibalism (a total breakdown in empathy) is generally absent among higher-order nonhuman animals, it has been observed in many human cultures.

Compared to instantaneous empathy, sympathy depends in important ways on conceptual processes (including the projected costs and benefits of helping) that are notably slower and less certain of occurrence. Sympathetic responses are also more subject to top-down control (e.g., mental manipulations stemming from biases and imagined consequences) than rapid, automatic, animal empathy. Thus, sympathetic responses may often be too little and too late for the victims of disasters, some of which result from only slightly disguised human predation exemplified in transactions between rich and poor and between high- and low-status ethnic groups. Thus, a potentially grave question remains: Does the evolutionary shift in capacities for empathy and sympathy represent a net loss or a net gain?

The pros and cons of unbridled imagination

There is also some question as to whether the evolutionary increases in the power of imagination should be judged a net gain or loss in weighing the emotion-related products of evolution. In some individuals and circumstances, unbridled imagination can facilitate tragedies on a personal as well as a national and global scale. Imagination can be fueled by either positive or negative emotion feelings or the interaction of both, and in turn, it can produce a cornucopia of both positive and negative emotion stimuli and behavioral responses (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Imagination doubtless played a role in the creation of nuclear weapons and still plays a role in planning their projected uses. It is also a factor in the development of factories, products, and policies that increase global warming and the pollution of the earth and the atmosphere at a dangerous rate.

In contrast, during early ontogeny the feeling-thought patterns of unbridled imagination facilitate cognitive and social development from the first moment that the young child engages in make-believe or pretend play. In these developmental processes and throughout the life span, imagination remains part emotion feeling and part cognition. It continues to add to individual and cultural accomplishments through the creative endeavors of artists and scientists.

Thus, “In the evolution of mind, imagination is as dangerous as it is essential” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 137). Nurturing imagination through the life span with a good balance of emotion feelings and the encouragement of empathy, sympathy, and reason, and an appreciation of how these ingredients can interact and work together for the common good, ubiquitous peace, and the preservation and flourishing of the species seem equally essential.

Remarkable Gains from Linking Emotion Feelings and Language

The process of symbolizing emotion in awareness has the potential to add significantly to adaptive personality and social functioning. Language is by far the most common method of symbolization across individuals and cultures, and researchers have verified at the behavioral and neural levels the positive effects of linking words to discrete emotion expressions and feelings ( L. Greenberg & Paivio 1997 , Izard 1971 , Izard et al. 2008a , Kennedy-Moore & Watson 1999 , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Major among the positive effects that accrue when we can use language to symbolize emotion feelings, especially in early development but also throughout the life span, are those relating to increases in emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and emotion utilization.

Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion’s inherently adaptive motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions ( Izard 1971 , 2002 , 2007a ; Izard et al. 2008c ; cf. Mayer & Salovey 1997 ). Emotion utilization involves spontaneous as well as planned actions, and it is conceptually different from direct attempts to regulate emotion or emotion-related behavior (cf. Eisenberg & Spinrad 2004 ). Although emotion regulation and emotion utilization are different constructs, they interact dynamically. Emotion utilization may be viewed as the optimal mode of emotion regulation, and various forms of the latter enhance the former.

It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the civilizing and socializing effects of learning to recognize, articulate, and utilize emotion feelings constructively, not only in early development but also throughout the life span. A key process here is developing connections between feelings, words, and thoughts. Unfortunately, linking emotion feelings to maladaptive thoughts like those that characterize racism, sexism, ageism, unbridled profit motives, and plans for vengeance, revenge, or terrorism can wreak extensive havoc to individuals, ethnic groups, and all of human kind. For an abundance of evidence supporting the foregoing assertion, read history and watch or listen to any daily news program.

UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND TOPICS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Two unresolved issues seem to impede scientific advances in the study of consciousness and levels of awareness. The first concerns the role of phenomenal consciousness and various linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in research on mind and behavior. The second concerns the relation of phenomenal consciousness and the psychological unconscious, their similarities and differences.

Psychologists’ Neglect of Phenomenal Consciousness

Several factors may have contributed to the general neglect of phenomenal consciousness in psychological theory and research. The first is a long-standing reluctance to acknowledge the extent to which emotions drive cognition and action and the possibility that some of the driving emotions register only in phenomenal consciousness. The second is the strong tendency of mainstream psychology to neglect developmental perspectives on critical issues and thus to ignore evidence of the existence and functionality of phenomenal consciousness and other linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in early development and probably in various forms of psychopathology. A third problem is that many psychologists think that most emotions are episodic, of limited duration, and in focal awareness. A related misconception is that once an emotion episode ends, the mind is free for purely rational processes. This notion persists despite eloquent arguments suggesting that there is no such thing as pure reason ( Creighton 1921 , Langer 1967/1982 ), especially in relation to personally or socially significant matters. Evidence suggests that in humans it may not be possible to study cognition and emotion separately ( Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 ). This conclusion is quite consistent with the present position, if the term “emotion” refers to emotion schemas.

A more appropriate goal would be to develop more effective ways to study emotion-cognition interactions and integration/mingling and consequent behavior change, particularly in research that involves constructs like emotion schemas ( Izard 1977 , 2007a ), emotional interpretations ( Lewis 2005 ), or affective-cognitive units ( Mischel & Shoda 1995 ). This would include most emotion research that does not focus on basic negative emotion episodes.

A final and perhaps most worrisome reason why phenomenal consciousness is still not a major concern of psychologists is that it is conflated with the psychological “unconscious.” Clearly, a vast amount of the processes of the brain and the rest of the body (blood circulation, digestion) often do occur without our awareness of them and, in normal circumstances, without direct effects on thought and action. When significant behavioral effects do occur without readily observable causes, they are often assigned to the psychological unconscious, where mechanisms are difficult to identify and explain ( Kihlstrom 1999 ).

More parsimonious and accurate explanations of unconscious behavior might accrue if we looked for mediators of thought and action (e.g., emotions) that reside in phenomenal consciousness. An example is the phenomenological (feeling) component of an unlabeled and thus unarticulated emotion experience, a feeling that you know you are experiencing but cannot specifically identify or describe. Inability to put the feeling into words bars it from linguistic accessibility and thus from access consciousness as typically defined, but not from phenomenal consciousness and various levels of awareness. An emotion feeling in phenomenal and other nonlinguistic levels of consciousness retains its properties, including its power to motivate and regulate cognition and action. Thus, conceptualizing fully functional emotion feelings as processes in phenomenal consciousness ( Panksepp 2005 ) provides an alternative way of explaining much of what has been attributed by others to the psychological unconscious (e.g., Kihlstrom 1999 , Winkielman et al. 2005 ; cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

Concern about types of consciousness may stimulate further thought and research about which mental processes relate to phenomenal consciousness and which are truly unconscious. Such research could look for processes that reside at a level of awareness that is unavailable via cognitive or verbal access but not necessarily via other forms of access. Several types of nonverbal behaviors reflect the operations of mental processes that clearly are not in linguistically accessible consciousness and that may reside in phenomenal consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b ; cf. Merker 2007 ). The lack of linguistic accessibility does not render an emotion or emotion feeling nonfunctional.

Phenomenal consciousness and other forms of linguistically inaccessible consciousness may be better concepts for psychology than is the concept of unconscious. The latter concept is notoriously vague and ill defined in the psychological literature. Dictionary definitions characterize it as not conscious as a state, without awareness, or sensation, virtually nonphysical, and thus make some uses of it very close to the domains of spookiness and Cartesian dualism.

The Psychological Unconscious: A Default Explanatory Construct?

Although there is considerable agreement on the qualities of thought processes in psychological or access (verbally reportable) consciousness, there is no consensus on the contents and processes of the unconscious (cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008 ). The behavior of prelingual infants suggests that it is not prudent to label all verbally unreportable processes as unconscious, a practice that may impede or misguide the search for causal processes. Better heuristics might come from the conceptualization of causal-process mechanisms operating at different levels of awareness and as accessible by multiple behaviors other than verbal report. Dividing the mind and all mental processes into two domains—conscious and unconscious—might be the greatest oversimplification in current psychological science. Moreover, misattribution of causal processes to the unconscious may open a Pandora’s Box replete with blind alleys and dead ends.

Four things have contributed to psychologists’ penchant for attributing causal processes to the unconscious rather than to emotion feelings, including emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. First, many psychologists have typically looked for nonemotion mediators to explain changes in cognition and action. Second, emotion feelings (and their roles in influencing cognitive processes) are notoriously difficult to identify and describe in words ( Creighton 1921 , Langer 1967/1982 ). However, infants and young children experience emotions and respond to them in meaningful ways long before they can label or describe emotions ( Izard et al. 2008b ). Such evidence points to the utility of assessing emotion feelings by measuring their functional correlates. Third, many psychologists remain reluctant to attribute to emotion a significant causal role in ordinary as well as critical thinking, decision making, and action despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000 , DeMartino et al. 2006 , Lerner & Tiedens 2006 , Miller 2006 , Naqvi et al. 2006 ). Fourth, many psychological scientists tend to think that emotions are typically brief and that emotion feelings are always sufficiently intense to grab and hold attention. Actually, plausible arguments suggest that emotion feelings are phenomena that vary on a very wide dimension of intensity while retaining their functional/causal properties ( Izard 2007a ).

Emerging Issues: Continuous Emotion, Memes, and the Mirror Neuron System

The topics of continuous emotion or continuous emotion-cognition interaction and integration, memes, and the mirror neuron system (MNS) may prove to be critical for emotion science and to psychology in general. The idea of continuous emotion in phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness will prove difficult to address in empirical research, but that may soon change with improved technology for studying brain-emotion-behavior relations. Already there is some convergence among theorists and researchers who argue that there is no such thing as a conscious mind without emotion or affect ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 , Russell 2003 ). The other two, memes and the MNS, relate to emotion and behavior in ways not completely understood. Yet, they have already become hot topics for those interested in new approaches to understanding within- and across-generations transmission of cognitive and action structures and the neurobiological bases for the transmission of emotion feelings in empathy and the processes in empathic and sympathetic responding.

Continuous Emotion-Cognition Interaction

The notion that some emotion or emotion-cognition interaction is continuous in phenomenal or access consciousness or some level of awareness is not new (e.g., Bacon 1620/1968 ). The hypothesis implicit in that idea may prove difficult to falsify. Yet, without the attribution of causal power to emotion (feeling) and the concept of continual emotion-cognition interaction, we may have no way to explain selective attention. And selective attention is a necessary factor in the simplest forms of exploration and learning as well as in higher-order cognition and sequences of organized behavior.

I have hypothesized that the brain automatically generates the emotion of interest to capture and sustain attention to particular objects, events, and goals. This mode of operation is standard when the brain is not responding to internal or external conditions that activate other emotions, emotion schemas, or emotion-cognition-environment interactions ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ).

A major challenge for future research is to understand how emotion and cognition behave in their continual interaction. One possibility is that they achieve complete integration and influence behavior as a unified force or single factor. However, I propose that although emotion and cognition continually interact, they do not lose their separate identities. They retain separate and distinct functional properties (cf. Pessoa 2008 ). Whereas emotion feeling undoubtedly contains a kind of information ( Clore et al. 2001 ) or cues for behavior ( Izard 1971 , 2007a ), emotion remains primarily about motivation. Cognition (particularly about goal concepts that typically have an emotion component) may be conceived as having a motivational aspect, but it remains primarily about knowledge.

Memes and Emotions

Memes are one of several epigenetic mechanisms that challenge the dominance of DNA as the central life force (cf. Noble 2006 ). Natural selection may operate on not only genes, DNA, or RNA. It can also act on “replicant” units (memes) that consist of cognition and action patterns, things other than biological structures that can be transmitted through imitative learning ( Dawkins 1989 ). Apparently, memes emerged to serve unique adaptive functions in social interactions.

In the course of evolution, the brain continued to evolve and increase in complexity until learning via imitation became a major tool in the human repertoire and a way of acquiring memes. Imitation and make-believe play in early development should prove a fertile ground for studying the transmission of memes. Even newborn infants can imitate simple facial behavior ( Meltzoff & Moore 1994 ) that may constitute part of the emotion expressions that they display later in infancy ( Izard et al. 1995 ). By age three years, children show great imitative skills while enjoying the fantasyland of make-believe play and learning socioemotional skills by assuming the roles of persons far beyond them in age, knowledge, skills, and experience. Thus, it was both phylogenetic transmission and the highly creative processes of ontogenetic development ( Noble 2006 ) that produced the capacity for imitative learning, which in turn essentially created a context where memes could replicate and compete ( Jablonka & Lamb 2005 ).

Though memes were originally described in terms of cognition and action patterns ( Dawkins 1989 ), the exclusion of emotion as a component may have been inadvertent. Indeed, emotion schemas seem perfect candidates for attaining status as memes. They not only have a cognitive component but also an emotion component and a kind of action component (the action tendencies in emotion states; Izard 2007a , b ). Thus, emotion schemas are well suited to emerge and operate as memes. Their emotion feeling component is often expressed through facial, vocal, and body-movement signals that are easily imitated, even by young children. In addition, imitating the expressive behavior of another person may activate neural and sensory motor processes that increase the likelihood of experiencing the emotion (and action tendencies) of the other person ( Izard 1990 , Niedenthal 2007 ). Young children’s imitation of their parents’ positive emotion expressions and interactions may contribute to the development of memes that represent significant social skills. Thus, emotion-schema memes (ESMs) as replicant units with a feeling/motivational component seem to be an expectable (epigenetic) extension of biogenetic-evolutionary processes.

Because emotions are contagious ( Hatfield et al. 1993 , Tomkins 1962 ), memes that are essentially emotion schemas can propagate profusely. They can do so for two reasons. First, such schemas have the attention-grabbing and motivational power of an emotion ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008 ). Second, they are highly functional phenomena independent of their relations to biological fitness and survival (cf. Aunger 2002 , Blackmore 1999 , Distin 2004 ). The idea that an emotion schema might form a replicant unit opens another door to investigations of the transfer of adaptive as well as maladaptive patterns of emotion, cognition, and action within and across generations.

Emotion schema memes begin to develop early in ontogeny, become plentiful, and may relate substantially to the MNS. There has been a surge of interest in the MNS, in part because it may be among the neural substrates of social perspective taking and empathy (e.g., Carr et al. 2003 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 , Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004 ).

Mirror Neuron Systems, Emotions, and Empathy

If the concept of memes becomes a staple in psychology, it may happen for two reasons. First, perhaps the most interesting and socially significant memes have an emotion component and are essentially emotion schemas whose behavioral manifestations (facial, vocal, gestural expressions of emotion) can be readily observed and analyzed. Second, they may depend in part on the MNS, which seems to mediate capabilities for perspective taking and empathy. The MNS may enable one to take the perspective of another and provide the shared emotion feeling that defines the essence of empathy (cf. Dapretto et al. 2006 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 ). The MNS apparently translates one’s sensory-perceptual experiences and accompanying conceptions of the expressions and movements of others into patterns of neural activity in the observer (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). This neural activity and its products help the observer to understand and predict the thoughts and feelings of the observed person.

The MNS may relate to sympathy and altruism as well. The cognitive component of an emotion schema, in interaction with its feeling component, may transform empathy to sympathy. This transformation would entail a shift from a response governed primarily by neuro-physiological or motor-system contagion to one that requires conceptual processes (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). An MNS that facilitates sympathy, altruism, and mimetic processes would facilitate highly adaptive advantages ( Miller 2008 , Talmi & Frith 2007 ).

Empathy alone is not always sufficient to motivate helping behavior ( Rosenthal 1964/1999 ). The cognition (particularly the action plans) in an ESM provides the context for its feeling component, and the interaction of the cognition and feeling in the meme can guide sympathetic actions. Dysfunction of the MNS may help account for the deficits in socialization that are observed in autism spectrum disorders ( Oberman & Ramachandran 2007 ) and in antisocial personality or perhaps in any disorder involving deficits or dysfunction in social skills ( Iacoboni 2007 ).

The possibility that the MNS and associated emotion systems mediate the generation and propagation of memes suggests the fruitfulness of studying memes that can be clearly identified as ESMs. ESMs should prove plentiful because they have an enormous appeal to forces that generate and propagate memes. The emotion component of an ESM has the motivational power to influence perception, grab attention, generate more emotion-cognition structures, and influence action. ESMs may constitute a major factor that shapes consciousness, personality and social functioning, and culture ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008 ).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Emotion research has increased exponentially since Tomkins’s (1962 , 1963 ) landmark volumes helped bring a nascent emotion science into an unevenly matched competition with the forces of the contemporaneous revolution that produced cognitive science. The two disciplines are becoming increasingly collaborative and progressing toward becoming one. As the realization of this exciting prospect proceeds, great challenges await scientists who will seek to understand how the brain assigns weights or significance to emotion and cognition (which assumedly retain distinct functions) as they are integrated or mingled in different periods of development, personalities, and contexts. They will find equally interesting challenges in research on ways to facilitate these processes to gain adaptive advantages, bolster constructive and creative endeavors, and prevent destructive and maladaptive behavior.

SUMMARY POINTS

• Emotion feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity and the key psychological/motivational aspect of emotion. They constitute the primary motivational systems for human behavior.
• Emotion feelings are prime factors in the evolution, organization, and operations of consciousness and the different levels of awareness.
• The ability to symbolize feelings and put them into words provides a powerful tool for emotion regulation, influencing emotion-cognition relations, and developing high-level social skills.
• The term “emotion” has defied definition mainly because it is multifaceted and not a unitary phenomenon or process. Use of the unqualified term “emotion” makes for misunderstandings, contradictions, and confusions in theory and research.
• Basic emotions, emotion schemas, and emotion-schema memes are distinctly different in terms of their origin, content, causes, and effects.
• Transitions from basic emotions to emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes are major milestones in development and in achieving social and emotion competence.
• The psychological unconscious is an ill-defined and potentially misleading term. There is no consensus regarding its contents and functions. The concept of levels of awareness may provide a better bridge to understanding human mentality and brain/mind processes.
• Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion’s inherently adaptive emotion motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions. Symbolization and effective communication of emotion feelings play a key role in emotion utilization, particularly in real or simulated social interactions.
• The concept of emotion-cognition interaction, well validated in neuroscience and behavioral research, suggests that the presence of functionally distinct features in the interactants would increase both the flexibility and generality of the resultant processes.

FUTURE ISSUES

• Experimental validation of the hypothesis that the feeling component of some emotion or emotion schema is continuous at some level of awareness should prove an interesting challenge for future research. So should studies designed to verify the hypothesis that interest or an interest schema is the default emotion or emotion-cognition interaction.
• Insights on the early development and life-span growth of emotion-schema memes should add substantially to our understanding of the contributions of social and cultural factors in mental processes and behavior.
• Distinguishing between emotion regulation and emotion utilization may provide new insights on the independence and interdependence of these two constructs.
• Determining how the emotion and cognitive components of emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes integrate or mingle in the brain should provide leads for translational research. The findings from such research should contribute to preventive interventions that facilitate the development of emotion and social competence and the prevention of psychopathology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Work on this article was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R21 MH068443 and R01 MH080909.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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Fears and Worries at Nighttime in Young Children: Development and Psychometric Validation of a Parent-Report Measure (FAWN-YC)

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• Published: 16 September 2024

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• Amy Shiels   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6147-7388 1 ,
• Laura Uhlmann   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6282-9736 1 ,
• Lara J. Farrell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4231-2227 1 , 2 ,
• Erinn Munro-Lee 1 &
• Caroline L. Donovan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6380-635X 1 , 2  

This paper outlines the development and psychometric evaluation of the Fears and Worries at Nighttime—Young Children (FAWN-YC) scale; a parent-rated measure for children aged 3–5 years. Based on previous literature, it was hypothesised that the measure would be represented by a six-factor solution, with four clusters of fear types and two behavioural manifestations of fears. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA; N = 436) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; N = 383), resulted in a final 17 items that loaded onto 3 factors: Nighttime Fear Focus (8 items, α = 0.92), Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference (5 items, α = 0.90), and Dark Fear (4 items, α = 0.88). Evidence of convergent validity was found through strong associations between the total score and subscales of the FAWN-YC with measures of child anxiety, fear, sleep, externalizing and conduct problems. Furthermore, there was support for divergent validity (through a very weak to no relationship with a measure of prosocial behaviours), and evidence for temporal stability was also established with 2-week test–retest reliability. Overall, the results provide strong preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the FAWN-YC total score and subscales. Implications for the use of the measure in research and clinical practice are discussed.

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Introduction

Nighttime fears are a heterogenous group of fears that include separation fears, personal safety fears, imagination-based fears, and darkness fears [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Nighttime fears are particularly prevalent in young children and are often considered developmentally normal, with almost 60% of 4- to 6-year-olds experiencing difficulties with fear at night [ 4 ]. Although nighttime fears are transient for many children, approximately 10 to 30% experience fear at night that is severe, persistent, interferes substantially with sleep, and requires significant family accommodation [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Cross-sectional literature indicates that compared to controls, preschool aged children with severe nighttime fears demonstrate increased general fears, internalising and externalising behaviours, and lower effortful control [ 8 ]. Similarly, El Rafihi-Ferreira et al. [ 9 ] found that internalising behaviours were positively associated with parent-reported child nighttime fear in a sample of preschool aged children whose parents attended a nighttime fear treatment program.

Indeed, severe nighttime fears are impairing, reaching diagnostic thresholds for an anxiety disorder (i.e., specific phobia and/or separation anxiety), and/or a sleep disorder (most commonly insomnia [ 10 , 11 ]. Anxiety and behavioural sleep disorders in the preschool developmental period can lead to numerous problematic consequences in both the short- and long-term. Anxiety in the preschool years frequently endures into later childhood and beyond, and predicts lower school engagement, poorer peer relations and functional impairment during the school-age years, as well as sleep difficulties and psychopathology into adulthood [ 4 , 12 , 13 ]. Similarly, behavioural sleep problems in the preschool period have been shown to persist into adolescence if untreated, with numerous deleterious social, emotional and educational consequences [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ].

Nighttime fears have recently gained renewed attention in the paediatric sleep literature as an important contributor to behavioural insomnia symptoms during the preschool developmental period [ 12 , 21 ]. In a recently published 25-year review of nighttime fears in children, Lewis et al. [ 21 ] analysed studies employing behavioural, and cognitive-behavioural interventions. It was concluded that treating nighttime fears resulted not only in significant reductions in nighttime fears and dark phobias, but also significantly improved sleep and reduced general fears, anxiety, internalising and externalising behaviour problems in children aged 3–12 years. Thus, for many young children, nighttime fears are at the root of difficulties with sleep and problems at bedtime. Given the high prevalence and deleterious consequences associated with nighttime fears, it is crucial that we comprehensively understand them and have a measure to screen for them early in life.

Nighttime fears vary both in terms of their focus and the behavioural difficulties resulting from them. With respect to focus, some children experience one specific fear, while others experience multiple fears, with nighttime fears generally clustering into presentations of separation fears (being away from parents), darkness-related fears (sounds, shadows), personal safety fears (being harmed by an intruder) and fears of the imagination (e.g., ghosts; [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]). With respect to behavioural difficulties manifesting as a result of nighttime fears, children may demonstrate resistance and refusal to participate in activities leading up to bedtime, they may cry and call out at bedtime, they may be unable to stay in a darkened bedroom or leave their room for other reasons [ 9 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ].

In order to effectively treat nighttime fears, clinicians must consider both the type of nighttime fear and the behavioural outcomes they produce. For example, a child who cries and repeatedly comes out of their room because they are afraid of the dark and therefore cannot remain alone in their darkened bedroom, will require a specific intervention. The treatment plan would include an exposure hierarchy which gradually exposes the child to being comfortable in the dark. This intervention would also include parenting strategies such as parent-mediated child relaxation skills, and effective praise. Alternatively, a young child who tantrums and refuses to take part in the bedtime routine because they are worried about being separated from their family at bedtime will require an alternative intervention. This treatment plan would likely begin with parenting strategies such as behaviour management skills (i.e., a bedtime routine reward chart, effective praise, how to negotiate with a young child, etc.) followed by an exposure hierarchy focused on gradually separating from their caregiver at night [ 6 ]. A comprehensive measure of nighttime fears and the behavioural outcomes they lead to, may assist in the development of an individual case formulation and evidence-based treatment plan. However, to date, such a measure has not been developed.

Despite nighttime fears being an important factor in the development and maintenance of sleep problems in young children, their assessment is notably absent from the vast majority of both paediatric anxiety and sleep measures developed to date. In fact, a validated measure for this vulnerable, preschool aged developmental period (i.e., ages 3–5 years) is yet to be developed. Within the paediatric anxiety literature, there are a few psychometrically validated measures assessing dark or night fears, however there is currently no measure for use in preschool aged populations. For instance, the self-report Fear of the Dark Scale [ 26 ], was designed for use with adults and adolescents. The child self-report Nighttime Fears Scale [ 27 ] and the child self-report and parent-report Children’s Nighttime Fear Survey [ 3 ] were developed for children over 7 and 8 years of age respectively. Turning to the paediatric sleep literature there exists only two measures that have been validated with a population which includes preschool aged children that include aspects of nighttime fears: the parent-report Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire [ 28 ] and the parent-report Manifestations and Vulnerabilities of Behavioural Insomnia in Childhood Scale [ 29 , 30 ]. However, both of these are comprehensive sleep measures with minimal items pertaining to fears and anxiety at night. For clinical and research purposes, both sleep measures provide insufficient detail on the type of nighttime fears and the particular behavioural manifestations that may result from them.

Both self-report and parent-report rating scales are limited by the amount and type of information that can be collected. Additionally, when it comes to parent-reports, Muris et al.’s [ 4 ] study of 4- to 12-year-olds concluded that parents provided a remarkable underestimation of the frequency of their child’s nighttime fears. Indeed, when examining the results reported separately by age group (4–6 years, 7–9 years and 10–12 years), there was a vast difference between child and parent reported fear frequency in the two older age groups. However, in the youngest group, there was a much smaller difference between the percentage of children (58.8%) and their parent (44.3%) reporting nighttime fears (operationalised in Muris et al. [ 31 ] as frequency). As for nighttime fear content in childhood, studies have found that children and their parents report very similar results [ 3 , 4 ]. Most scales assessing anxiety and sleep in preschool aged children are parent-report [ 32 , 33 ]. Designing a parent-report measure of nighttime fears allows for clinicians and researchers to easily include the measure in a relevant survey battery. Furthermore, when comparing parent-report measures with other methods of data collection for dark and nighttime fears (e.g., interviews, tests of passive approach, psychophysiological records, see Orgilés et al. [ 27 ], psychometrically validated parent-report scales offer a reliable, standardised, time efficient and cost-effective method to collect data on young children.

Given the lack of a validated measure of nighttime fears in preschoolers, researchers examining the treatment of nighttime fears in young children have instead relied on adapted interviews [ 8 , 25 , 34 , 35 ], checklists [ 2 ], modifications of other valid measures (such as general fear measures), or unvalidated measures [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. A psychometrically validated parent-report measure of nighttime fears for children in the preschool developmental period is therefore warranted for both research and clinical purposes.

The aim of this research was to develop and psychometrically validate, a parent-rated measure of nighttime fears in preschool aged children titled Fears and Worries at Nighttime – Young Children (FAWN-YC). Based on previous research [ 1 , 2 , 4 ] it was hypothesised that the FAWN-YC would best be explained by a 6-factor solution including four nighttime fear clusters (1) personal safety fears, (2) separation fears, (3) imaginal/fantasy fears, and (4) inherent characteristics of the dark fears), and two avoidance and interference clusters (5) at bedtime/sleep and (6) in the dark/at nighttime). It was also hypothesised that these factors would be correlated with each other and may represent a general factor structure of overall nighttime fears and worries.

It was further hypothesised that scores on the FAWN-YC would demonstrate strong internal consistency, strong convergent validity (i.e., positive correlations) with theoretically related constructs including measures of fear, anxiety, sleep problems, sleep anxiety, conduct problems and emotional problems, as well as divergent validity (i.e., low, weak to no relationship) with the theoretically unrelated construct of prosocial behaviour. Finally, it was hypothesised that the test–retest reliability of the FAWN-YC would be strong over a 2-week period.

General Method

Godfred et al.’s [ 39 ] three phase approach for scale development in health, social, and behavioural sciences was used to guide scale development in conjunction with Spruyt and Gozal’s [ 40 ] steps in paediatric sleep tool development. The three phases include: Phase (1) Item development ; aimed to generate items and assess the measure content through use of an expert panel. Phase (2) Scale development ; aimed to pilot test the measure, conduct item reduction analyses and conduct an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to examine the factor structure. Phase (3) Scale evaluation ; aimed to confirm the factor structure using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and examine the psychometric properties of validity (convergent validity and divergent validity) and reliability (internal consistency and test–retest reliability).

For all phases, participants (i.e., parents of children aged 3–5 years) were recruited internally at the university through a staff and student call for research and the first-year psychology research pool, and externally through advertisement on social media and in private childcare centres, primary schools and early childhood groups and associations. Data for all phases were collected online using Lime Survey, hosted by the University’s research survey centre. Participants were excluded if their child was outside the age range (< 3 years or > 5 years) or if their child had been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental or intellectual disorder. All measures (with the exception of demographic questions) required a response to prevent missing data. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, and participants were free to withdraw from the study at any time. Participants were first presented with an electronic copy of information and consent forms, and only those who provided digital consent went on to complete the online survey. Following survey completion, participants could choose to be directed to a separate survey to enter a prize draw for the chance to win $AU20–$50 gift cards and to provide student details to gain course credit for participation (if applicable).

Phase 1: Item Development

The aims of Phase 1 were to generate items and assess the measure content through use of an expert panel. The item pool was designed to capture the six theoretically derived nighttime fear domains. The domains included sub-types of nighttime fear (including (1) personal safety fears, (2) separation fears, (3) imaginal/fantasy fears, and (4) inherent characteristics of the dark fears), as well as associated avoidance and interference behaviours, at (5) bedtime/sleep and (6) in the dark).

The hypothesised factor structure served as a framework for item creation [ 41 ] with items specifically generated to tap into each content area (i.e., factor). The instructions, factors and initial 62 item pool were generated based on a scientific literature review [ 1 , 2 , 4 ], as well as contribution from field professionals (three academics, two clinical psychologists, two PhD psychology candidates studying sleep and child anxiety, four provisional psychologists, two early primary school teachers, and a case manager from a large psychology clinic) and end users (two fathers and three mothers of preschoolers with nighttime fears).

It has been suggested that a minimum of 3 items, and preferably 5—6 items, are required to represent a factor [ 42 ]. As subsequent psychometric analyses were designed to reduce the final number of items, and as EFA performs better when factors are overdetermined, it was decided to be over inclusive (i.e., by a minimum of 50%) when generating items [ 41 , 42 , 43 ]. Therefore, for a proposed 6-factor solution with 5–7 items per factor as the desired scale size, between 48 to 66 items (8–11 per factor) was determined to be ideal. The response format used a 6-point Likert scale requiring parents to rate how true each item is of their child (0 = not at all true, 1 = rarely true, 2 = sometimes true, 3 = often true, 4 = very often true and 5 = always true), with reference to the previous week, or most recent regular week.

A neutral midpoint option was not provided in order to avoid complacency and indecisiveness. A greater number of options (i.e., 6) were included in order to increase precision and variability in measurement, as well as to increase internal consistency and dependability [ 40 , 44 , 45 ]. Items were written according to the basic principles described by Clark and Watson [ 43 ], Spruyt and Gozal [ 40 ], which highlight the importance of avoiding dated phrases, double-barrelled questions, complex wording and colloquialisms.

To examine the measure content, the scale was then sent for review to an expert panel from the USA and Australia (N = 7) with expertise in paediatric anxiety, sleep, and scale development. Experts were asked to provide feedback on clinical and research relevance, comprehensiveness, comprehensibility of individual items, the hypothesised factor structure, instructional blurb and rating scale. Following expert feedback, minor wording edits were made, and five items were removed.

Phase 2: Scale Development

This phase aimed to pilot test the measure and conduct item reduction analysis before conducting an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to examine the factor structure.

The resulting pool of 57 items were then pilot tested with 120 parents of children aged 3 to 5 years. The aim of the pilot was to gain anecdotal feedback on the wording of the instructions and items, and to psychometrically examine the items for purposes of item reduction and refinement. Spruyt and Gozal [ 40 ] recommend that pilot trials are an important step before factor analysis to determine whether or not items, scale or layout need to be changed in any way (rather than simple deletion). The minimum N required to conduct a pilot test is generally the number of items on the scale plus one [ 41 ], with more than 100 participants being considered ideal [ 43 ]. Therefore, the 120 participants for the pilot test was deemed sufficient.

Pilot Test Participants

Detailed demographic information for each sample used in this research is outlined in Supplementary Table 1. The participants for the pilot test were 120 parents aged between 22 and 55 years ( M  = 36.10, SD  = 5.47), who reported being either the mother (99.2%), or father (0.8%) of a child aged between 3 and 5 years old ( M  = 3.91, SD  = 0.78). The majority of adult respondents were Caucasian (88.3%), married (79.2%) had a household income over AUD$100, 001 (67.5%), and had completed a bachelor degree (34.2%). The majority of children were male (59.2%) and lived with both parents (91.7%).

Pilot Test Item Reduction Analysis and Results

Items were considered for removal if they met both of the following criteria: (1) item redundancy or low correlations with other items (i.e., inter-item correlations of r > 0.80 or < 0.30 respectively); (2) poor item statistics (i.e., if all response options were not utilised, or there were corrected item-total correlations of r < 0.40). Using these criteria, the item pool was reduced to 37 items. There were no changes made to the wording of items, instructions or general layout based on participant feedback.

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Efa participants.

The participants for the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were 436 parents aged between 19 and 56 years ( M  = 33.88, SD  = 6.65), who reported being either the mother (79.7%), father (14.5%), or primary caregiver (5.8%) of a child aged between 3 and 5 years old ( M  = 3.99, SD  = 0.85). The majority of adult respondents were Caucasian (80.2%), married (64.1%) had a household income over AUD$100, 001 (45.8%), and had completed a bachelor degree (29.1%). Just over half of the children were female (50.2%) and the majority lived with both parents (76.6%). Refer to Supplementary Table 1 for further demographic details.

EFA Data Analysis

Prior to conducting the EFA, items were removed if they met two or more of the following criteria: (1) item redundancy or insufficient correlations with other items (i.e., inter-item correlations of r > 0.80 or < 0.30 respectively), (2) poor item statistics (i.e., if all response options were not utilised), or if there were corrected item-total correlations of r < 0.40, and/or (3) age bias (i.e., if a singular item correlated (r > 0.35) with the reported age of the child or parent [ 41 , 43 ]. Eight items were excluded based on these criteria, leaving 29 items for the EFA, none of which required reverse scoring.

The R package ‘psych’ (v. 4.3.0) [ 46 ] was used to conduct a series of EFAs, using polychoric correlations and specifying principal axis factoring with oblique rotation (i.e., direct oblimin). This rotation technique was selected as factors were likely to be correlated [ 47 ]. The number of factors retained was established using parallel analysis [ 48 ], examination of the scree plot [ 49 ], the Kaiser–Guttman criterion (i.e., retention of factors with eigenvalues ≥ 1.0, [ 50 , 51 ], and inspection of the pattern matrix. During factor extraction, items were assessed for poor primary-factor loading (i.e., < 0.40) or small communalities (i.e., < 0.40), cross-loading (i.e., secondary factor loadings of ≥ 0.30), lack of conceptual/face validity (i.e., loading of an item on a factor that did not align with theory or hypothesised factor), and whether or not they formed part of a non-robust factor (i.e., a factor with less than three items). Decisions regarding item exclusion and retention were both data- and theoretically driven [ 41 , 43 ].

EFA Results

Barlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ 2  = 9711.95, df = 406, p  < 0.001) and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value was 0.96, indicating that the initial 29 items were appropriate for factor analysis. Additionally, all measures of sampling adequacy taken from the diagonal of the anti-image correlation table, were = > 0.80, and all assumptions were met. The scree plot, Kaiser–Guttman criterion, and parallel analysis converged on a four-factor solution, rather than the hypothesised 6-factor solution. Upon inspection of the pattern matrix, it was identified that the four types of nighttime fears (personal safety fears, separation fears, imaginal/fantasy fears, and inherent characteristics of the dark fears), collapsed onto a single factor, representing ‘Nighttime Fear Focus’. The second factor contained items pertaining to the avoidance and interference behaviours at bedtime/sleep representing ‘Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference’. The third factor pertained to both fear of the dark itself and the manifesting behaviours in the dark representing ‘Dark Fear’. The fourth factor consisted of three unrelated items that did not align with theory or the proposed factor structure and were consequently removed from the scale. Nine additional items were removed from the scale due to cross loading (5 items), misalignment with theory (one item), and redundancy (3 items).

A final EFA was conducted with the 17 remaining items, revealing a three-factor solution that explained 70% of the total variance. The final 17 items and scale statistics are presented in Table  1 , with all items loading strongly onto their primary factor with no cross-loadings. The first factor (‘Nighttime Fear Focus’) consisted of eight items pertaining to various fears at nighttime (including personal safety fears, separation fears, imaginal/fantasy fears), with loadings ranging between 0.52 and 0.93. The second factor (‘Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference’) consisted of five items capturing bedtime/sleep avoidance behaviour and interference, with loadings between 0.63 and 0.96. The third factor (‘Dark Fear’) consisted of four items reflecting both fear of the dark and specific avoidance behaviour and interference of darkness, with loadings ranging between 0.75 and 0.87. The factors were moderately to strongly correlated with each other (r = 0.62–0.78).

Phase 3: Scale Evaluation

Phase 3 aimed to confirm the factor structure of the 17-item FAWN-YC, examine the possibility of a general factor structure and examine the psychometric properties of validity (convergent validity and divergent validity) and reliability (internal consistency and test–retest reliability over a 2-week period).

Phase 3 Procedure and Participants

The same recruitment methods were used as those outlined in the General Methods except that, at the end of the survey, participants were given the opportunity to provide their unique participant identification code and email address in order to be contacted to complete an additional, later survey for the purpose of test–retest reliability.

The participants were 383 parents and primary caregivers aged between 21 and 66 years ( M  = 35.39, SD  = 6.11), who reported being either the mother (96.3%), father (2.1%) or primary caregiver (0.5%) of a child aged between 3 and 5 years old ( M  = 4.33, SD  = 0.79). Fifteen participants began the questionnaire but were excluded due to having children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and another 5 were excluded due to having children outside the selected age range. The majority of adult respondents were Caucasian (90%), married (65%) had a household income over AUD$100, 001 (57.2%), and had completed a bachelor degree (34.5%). Just over half of the children were male (52.0%) and the majority lived with both parents (79.4%). Refer to Supplementary Table 1 for further demographic details.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Cfa data analysis.

Prior to analysis, descriptive statistics were examined for outliers, and assumptions were all checked and met. The data were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 29) analytic software and Amos Graphics (Version 29). Amos Graphics was used to conduct a CFA with a robust maximum likelihood estimation to confirm the factor structure identified in the EFA. To evaluate model fit, several commonly used indices were considered (χ 2 , χ 2 relative to sample size, adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI), comparative fit index (CFI), and root mean square error of association (RMSEA)). While a non-significant χ 2 is indicative of “good” model fit, it is sensitive to large sample sizes, such as that used in the current study. For a large sample size, it is therefore recommended to divide χ 2 by the degrees of freedom with ratios of 2–3 indicative of “good” model fit [ 52 ]. Adequate model fit can also be determined by an AGFI greater than 0.90 and a CFI greater than 0.95. A RMSEA less than 0.05 is also considered “good” model fit, values between 0.05 and 0.08 indicative of “fair” and “acceptable” fit, and values between 0.08 and 0.10 indicative of “mediocre fit” [ 53 ]. The model was also compared to a general-factor model (i.e., whereby all 17 items were allowed to load onto a single latent factor) using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Lower AIC values indicate a model that is more parsimonious and better-fitting [ 54 ].

CFA Results

A CFA was performed with items constrained to load onto their respective factors, and factors allowed to covary as per the EFA results and a-priori theory. According to model fit indices, the hypothesised measurement model had acceptable to good fit to the data in this sample, χ 2 (114, N  = 383) = 275.51, p  < 0.001, χ 2 / df  = 2.42, AGFI = 0.90, CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06 (CI90 = 0.05, 0.07) and AIC = 353.51 and explained a total of 70% of the variance. The standardised confirmatory factor loadings for each item are presented in Table  1 . The Cronbach alphas for each subscale (α = 0.86–0.90) and the total score (α = 0.92) were acceptable, with moderate to strong correlations between each subscale (r = 0.54–0.83).

A general factor model was also examined, whereby all 17 items were allowed to load onto a single latent factor. This model had poor fit, χ 2 (119, N = 383) = 1228.00, p < 0.001, χ 2 /df = 10.319, AGFI = 0.55, CFI = 0.70, RMSEA = 0.16 (CI90 = 0.15, 0.16) and AIC = 1296.00 While the AIC revealed that the general factor model had poorer fit compared to the measurement model, the standardized loadings for each item in the general factor model were moderate to strong (0.55 to 0.75). There were also strong positive correlations found between the total score and the three subscales and furthermore, the total score demonstrated acceptable internal consistency in both EFA and CFA (α = 0.95 and 0.92 respectively). Therefore, while model fit suggests the 3-factor model is a considerably better fit that the general factor model, the strength in the other psychometric properties provide preliminary evidence for use of a total FAWN-YC score.

Psychometric Tests of Validity and Reliability

IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 29) analytic software was used to conduct all tests of validity and reliability.

Validity: Convergent and Divergent Validity

Convergent and divergent validity measures, sleep problems.

The total score and Sleep Anxiety subscale score of the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ; [ 28 ] were used to examine the convergent validity of the FAWN-YC. The CSHQ is a 33-item (e.g. “ Child needs parent in the room to fall asleep ”) parent-report instrument that contains items related to common sleep behaviours in children. Items are rated on a three-point Likert scale (1 = rarely [0–1 night per week] to 3 = usually [5–7 nights per week]), with each question asked in relation to the previous week. The total score, calculated by summing all items, may range from 33 to 99, with higher scores indicating more problematic child sleep behaviours, and total scores over 41 being indicative of a clinical level paediatric sleep problem [ 28 ]. The 4-item Sleep Anxiety subscale is calculated by summing the 4 component items, and may range from 4 to 12, with higher scores indicative of greater sleep anxiety.

The CSHQ has been used with parents of children from early childhood to early adolescence [ 33 ] and has shown acceptable total internal consistency with both community (α = 0.72; [ 55 ]) and clinical (α = 0.77; [ 29 , 30 ]) samples of parents of young children aged 3 to 5 years. The CSHQ total score has also demonstrated acceptable test–retest reliability (range between 0.62 and 0.79 [ 28 ]). The Sleep Anxiety subscale has demonstrated slightly lower than acceptable internal consistency with both community (0.63) and clinical (0.68) samples [ 28 ].

The Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS; [ 56 ]) measures child anxiety and was used to examine convergent validity. The PAS is a 28-item (e.g. “ Is tense, restless or irritable due to worrying ”) parent-report instrument designed for children aged 3 to 5 years. The items are rated on a 5-point scale from 0 =  not at all true to 4 =  very often true . Items are summed to produce a total score that may range from 0 to 112, with higher scores indicating greater anxiety. The PAS has a strong evidence base, including evidence of convergent and divergent validity in clinical and community populations, and evidence of sensitivity to intervention effects and strong inter-assessor agreement [ 13 ]. Internal consistency in previous studies of preschoolers using the total PAS has been acceptable (α = 0.92; [ 30 ]).

Mythical Creatures Fears and Vulnerability Fears

The 13-item Mythical Creatures Fears (e.g. ghosts or spooky things) and 7-item Vulnerability Fears (e.g. being alone) subscales of The Modified Fear Survey Schedule for Children–II (FSSC– IIP; [ 57 ]) were used to examine convergent validity. The FSSC– IIP is a parent-report survey specifically designed for parents of children aged 3 to 9 years, with parents asked to rate their child’s level of fear of the subject of each item (e.g. imaginary creatures) on a 3-point scale from 1 =  not scared (not applicable) to 3 =  very scared . Items on the subscale are summed to produce a subscale score, with higher scores indicating greater fear of mythical (imaginary) creatures or the feeling of vulnerability (being alone, being in the dark). The factor structure of the FSSC– IIP has been supported in a large Australian sample [ 57 ] and acceptable internal consistency has been demonstrated (α = 0.70; [ 58 ]).

Conduct Problems, Emotional Symptoms and Prosocial Behaviours

The Conduct Problems and Emotional Symptoms subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; [ 59 ]) were used to examine the convergent validity, while the Prosocial Behaviours subscale was used to measure divergent validity. The SDQ is a 25-item parent-report instrument for use with parents of children aged 2–17 years. Items on the SDQ are rated on a three-point Likert scale (0 = not true to 2 = certainly true) with each question asked in relation to the previous 6-month period. Higher scores on the Conduct Problems and Emotional Symptoms subscales are indicative of greater problems, while higher scores on the Prosocial Behaviour subscale indicate more positive behaviours. The SDQ has shown satisfactory construct validity and acceptable internal consistency with large samples of parents of young children aged 3 to 5 years (Conduct Problems, Emotional Problems and Prosocial Behaviour subscale α ranges of mothers and fathers = 0.72 to 0.84 [ 60 ]).

Convergent and Divergent Validity Data Analysis and Results

Prior to analysis, descriptive statistics were examined for outliers, and assumptions were all checked and met. Bivariate correlations were used to assess convergent and divergent validity. Table 2 presents the means, standard deviations, bivariate correlations and Cronbach’s alphas of all variables used in this phase. Correlations between the FAWN-YC composite and subscale scores and measure of convergent validity were all significant and in the predicted directions ( r  = 0.30 to 0.82, p  < 0.01). With respect to divergent validity, correlations between the FAWN-YC composite score and subscales and the SDQ prosocial subscale were all non-significant, with the exception of a very weak negative correlation between the Dark Fear subscale and the prosocial subscale of the SDQ ( r  = − 0.10, p  < 0.05).

Reliability: Internal Consistency

Cronbach’s α was used to assess the internal consistency of the FAWN-YC factors in both the EFA and CFA samples, which are reported in Table  1 . As cited in Godfred et al. [ 39 ], when it comes to validating scales α = 0.70 is acceptable, and between α = 0.80 and 0.95 is preferred. In both the EFA and CFA samples, the total score reached preferred internal consistency in (α = 0.95 and 0.92 respectively). The internal consistency of each factor also reached preferred reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.86–0.92).

Reliability: Test–Retest

Test–retest reliability procedure and participants.

Participants from phase 3 recruitment who consented to be contacted again were invited via email to complete the FAWN-YC two weeks after the first administration. Responses recorded at Time 1 and Time 2 were matched using a unique participant identification code. Only participants who completed the second assessment within the two-week retest period were included. Of the 383 participants, 229 consented to be contacted and entered their unique code and email address. Of the 229, 120 were contactable and were emailed a link to complete the survey within the allocated time frame (i.e., ± 48 h from 2 weeks post completion of the phase 3 initial survey). In the email, participants were reminded of their unique code and given instructions to enter it at the beginning of the survey. Of the 120 participants contacted, 52 went on to complete the retest survey within the allocated time period. The resulting 52 participants were aged between 21 and 47 years (M = 34.46, SD  = 5.85) and reported being either the mother (98.1%) or father (1.9%) of a child aged between 3 and 5 years old (M = 4.92, SD  = 1.19). The majority of adult respondents were Caucasian (84.6%), married (63.5%) and had completed a bachelor degree (59.6%), with just over half of the families having a household income over AUD$100, 001 (50%), The majority of children were male (57.7%) and living with both parents (80.8%).

Test–Retest Data Analysis and Results

Intraclass correlation coefficient estimates, 95% confidence intervals based on a 2-way mixed-effects model with absolute-agreement were run. Confidence interval values greater than 0.90 indicate excellent reliability, values between 0.75 and 0.9 suggest good reliability, values between 0.5 and 0.75 suggest moderate reliability and values less than 0.5 suggest poor test–retest reliability [ 61 ]. Intraclass correlation coefficient estimates suggested temporal stability over a two-week period for the FAWN-YC total score and subscales. The FAWN-YC composite score was considered excellent (ICC = 0.95, 95% CI [0.90, 0.97]), as was the Dark Fears subscale (ICC = 0.95, 95% CI [0.92, 0.97]). Both the Nighttime Fear Focus subscale (ICC = 0.88, 95% CI [0.79, 0.93]) and the Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference subscale (ICC = 0.93, 95% CI [0.86, 0.96]) were considered to have good reliability.

The purpose of this research was to develop and psychometrically evaluate the Fears and Worries at Nighttime—Young Children (FAWN-YC); a parent-rated measure for children aged 3–5 years (freely available in the Supplementary materials including scoring key). Phase 1 aimed to generate items and assess the measure content through use of an expert panel. Phase 2 aimed to pilot test the measure, conduct item reduction analysis and conduct an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to examine the factor structure. Phase 3 aimed to confirm the factor structure using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and examine the psychometric properties of validity (convergent and divergent) and reliability (internal consistency and test–retest). Although 6 subscales were originally proposed, the results of Phases 2 and 3 indicated a 3-factor structure best fit the data. The final 17 item scale consisted of three subscales measuring: Nighttime Fear Focus (8 items), Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference (5 items) and Dark Fear including avoidance and interference of darkness (4 items). The internal consistency of the three subscales and total score was found to be acceptable, and the convergent and divergent validity of the scale was supported. Finally, the FAWN-YC total score and subscales demonstrated test–retest reliability, indicating temporal stability over a two-week period.

The total score and subscales of the FAWN-YC demonstrated strong psychometrics including internal consistency, test–retest reliability, convergent validity and divergent validity suggesting that the scale is a psychometrically sound and valid measure of nighttime fears and worries in young children, that will provide a useful instrument for researchers and clinicians alike. Indeed, although our findings support the independent use of the three FAWN-YC subscales over the composite score, the total score demonstrated very strong psychometric properties, providing preliminary support for its use.

With regards to convergent validity, Phase 3 demonstrated that the FAWN-YC total score and its three subscales were all significantly and positively correlated with theoretically and empirically linked variables related to nighttime fears in young children, with the strength of each of these correlations making theoretical sense. For instance, the ‘Nighttime Fear Focus’ subscale correlated most strongly with a measure of child anxiety (PAS; [ 56 ]), the ‘Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference’ subscale correlated most strongly with a measure of total child sleep problems (CSHQ [ 28 ]), and the ‘Dark Fear’ subscale correlated most strongly with the Vulnerabilities subscale of the Modified Fear Survey Schedule for Children–II (FSSC-IIP [ 57 ]), which has three (of seven) items related directly to fear of the dark. Overall, the findings suggest that higher levels of nighttime and darkness fears and their behavioural manifestations are related to higher levels of both internalising (e.g., anxiety), and externalising (e.g., conduct problems) behaviours, as well as sleep problems. The findings therefore are consistent with previous research reporting links between nighttime fears, internalising, externalising, and sleep problems in preschool aged children [ 8 , 9 ] and thus support the overall validity of the subscale and total scale scores.

Although psychometrically strong, the factor structure of the FAWN-YC is different to what was predicted. Six factors were originally hypothesised, with four factors predicted to cluster around distinct fear categories (personal safety fears, separation fears, imaginal/fantasy fears, inherent characteristics of the dark fears) and two representing different types of interference (bedtime/sleep time and the dark/night). However, while the ‘Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference’ factor emerged as distinct, the different types of nighttime fears and the dark avoidance and interference factors did not , and instead emerged as two factors. Most nighttime fear types clustered onto the one factor, ‘Nighttime Fear Focus’, which was characterised by worries and fear of things at nighttime (being alone, safety, imaginal), whereas fear of dark itself and avoidance and interference in the dark merged together to create a separate factor (i.e., ‘Dark Fear’). Given the way in which these factors have emerged, combined with evidence of correlation strengths and convergent validity, children who score high in the ‘Nighttime Fear Focus’ factor may be more representative of children with anxiety (i.e., separation anxiety, generalised anxiety), whereas children scoring high in ‘Dark Fear’ may represent more fear-based symptomology (i.e., specific phobia of the dark). Future research could examine whether this measure could predict distinct comorbidity clusters using clinical samples.

Although the predicted factor structure was based on a review of the literature [ 1 , 2 , 4 ], the literature reviewed was less than optimal in several ways. First, most studies examining nighttime fear types in children have focused on primary school aged children and young adolescents, rarely including preschool children. Given the specific developmental characteristics of preschool children, it may be that younger children experience fears at night differently to their older counterparts being more likely to experience a range of nighttime fears rather than specific ones. Second, only one study (that did not include children under 8.5 years of age, that used a relatively small sample from the Netherlands, and that was conducted almost 4 decades ago) examined the factor structure of their reported measure [ 3 ]. All other studies either clustered fears based on face validity or based their categories on the one study that did use factor analysis [ 1 , 2 , 4 ]. Although this research requires replication, the findings regarding factor structure speak to the importance of developing a nighttime fear measure specifically for preschool children, and highlight the differences between young children and their older child and teenage counterparts.

It is noteworthy, and indeed surprising, that items related to co-sleeping were ‘dropped’ from the ‘Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference’ factor due to poor primary-factor loading, insufficient correlations with other items and poor item statistics. When examining the behavioural manifestations of nighttime fears, the authors chose to use the sentence starter “Because of fears at nighttime, my child…” with the intention to gather information pertaining to parental perception of the behaviours directly related to child nighttime fears. The fact that co-sleeping items were dropped from this subscale therefore suggests that reactive co-sleeping may not be the result of nighttime fears in preschool aged children. Interestingly, a recent systematic review and cross-cultural meta-analysis examining co-sleeping and sleep problems in childhood noted the inconsistency in the relationship between co-sleeping and sleep anxiety and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to suggest a causal relationship [ 62 ]. Furthermore, most of the studies included in the review by Peng et al. did not include children in the preschool developmental period, with most co-sleeping literature focussed either on infants or primary school aged children. It may well be that co-sleeping is better explained by other child and parent factors rather than nighttime fears. The factors may possibly include child anxiety disorders (particularly separation anxiety) [ 63 , 64 ], child behavioural difficulties such as bedtime resistance) [ 62 ] and even parental distress [ 23 , 65 ]. Clearly reactive co-sleeping in the preschool development period warrants further investigation in this regard.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

This series of research allowed for the systematic development and psychometric testing of the FAWN-YC, using large sample sizes, and advanced statistical techniques. However, there were a number of limitations that should be noted. First, sensitivity and specificity were not tested, nor was this sample large enough, or demographically heterogenous enough, to determine norms. Collecting a larger, more diverse sample in the future, and including an accompanying clinical interview, would allow examination of the ability of the FAWN-YC to differentiate between children with and without problematic nighttime fears, and to determine norms. Second, the generalisability of the results of this study was limited by the proportion of male to female parents and caregivers completing the surveys. Although large sample studies indicate good inter-parent agreement in ratings of behavioural and emotional problems in preschool-aged children [ 66 ], future research would benefit from further attempts to recruit fathers in parent samples. Third, the sample was homogenous in terms of ethnicity, level of education, and wealth, thus limiting the generalisability of results to other populations. Future studies should strive to include samples that are more heterogenous in terms of these constructs. Finally, previous research suggests that parents can underestimate the frequency and intensity of their young child’s fears [ 67 ]. As is the case for all measures of anxiety and internal thoughts and states in the preschool developmental period, the FAWN-YC total score, and in particular the Nighttime Fear Focus subscale, may be susceptible to variance in the child’s ability to understand and share their fears and worries. It may also be susceptible to variance due to the parent’s ability to perceive their child’s fears and worries, which is indeed an important area for future inquiry. Similarly, as young children may lack the cognitive sophistication to respond to questionnaires and interviews, future research may include more objective measures (i.e., skin conductance, actigraphy or recordings/observations of child’s nighttime behaviours) to further validate the FAWN-YC.

Implications and Conclusions

The findings of this research indicate that the 17-item Fears and Worries at Nighttime—Young Children (FAWN-YC) is a psychometrically valid, parent-report scale of nighttime fears. The FAWN-YC provides researchers and clinicians with a valid and reliable tool to assess the specific nighttime fear the child may have, the variety of nighttime fears the child has, and importantly, parental perceptions regarding how nighttime fears are affecting their child’s nighttime behaviours.

For researchers, The FAWN-YC provides a user-friendly, psychometrically valid measure of nighttime fears in children that may be used in a variety of studies including epidemiological studies, studies examining the antecedents and consequences of nighttime fears, and studies aiming to determine the efficacy of treatment programs designed to treat nighttime fears in this population.

For clinicians, the FAWN-YC may assist in the conceptualisation and treatment of children with nighttime fears. For example, although the focus of the fears/worries did not cluster into separate categories as expected (e.g., separation, imaginal, etc.), clinicians may still examine the scale at an item level to identify specific target fears in treatment. Thus, the brevity of the scale provides an efficient means of gathering information from parents to use for case formulation and treatment planning. Indeed, clinicians may use subscale scores to determine whether the child’s fears and worries are interfering with sleep and bedtime behaviours (subscale level) and in what specific manner (item level), or if the child is also afraid of the dark (subscale level).Therefore, the FAWN-YC may assist in identifying the target of an exposure hierarchy and the requirement for combinations of child relaxation skills, co-regulation skills, and/or parent upskilling such as behaviour management, exposure games and psychoeducation. Thus, the FAWN-YC is likely to be of significant value in both research and clinical settings, informing our understanding and treatment of fear, anxiety and sleep difficulties in preschool aged children.

While childhood nighttime fears can be developmentally normal and transient in nature, approximately 10 to 30% of young children experience fear at night that is severe, persistent, interferes substantially with sleep, and requires significant family accommodation [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. While literature examining nighttime fears in the preschool developmental period (3–5 years) is expanding, a validated measure of nighttime fears in young children does not yet exist. This paper outlines the development and psychometric evaluation of the Fears and Worries at Nighttime—Young Children (FAWN-YC) scale, a parent-rated measure for children aged 3–5 years. Based on previous literature, it was hypothesised that the measure would be represented by a six-factor solution, with four clusters of fear types (separation fears, darkness-related fears, personal safety fears and fears of the imagination) and two behavioural manifestations of fears (behaviours at bedtime/sleep and behaviours in the dark). However, exploratory factor analysis (EFA; N = 436) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; N = 383), resulted in a final 17 items that loaded onto only 3 factors: Nighttime Fear Focus (8 items, α = 0.92), Bedtime/Sleep Avoidance and Interference (5 items, α = 0.90), and Dark Fear (4 items, α = 0.88). The findings of this factor structure speak to the importance of developing this measure specifically for this unique developmental period, and highlights the differences between preschoolers and their older child and teenage counterparts. Evidence of convergent validity was found through strong associations between the total score and subscales of the FAWN-YC with measures of child anxiety, fear, sleep, externalising and conduct problems. Furthermore, there was support for divergent validity, and evidence for temporal stability over a 2-week period. Overall, the results provide strong preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the FAWN-YC total score and subscales and evidence for the importance of developing a nighttime fear measure specifically for preschool aged children. The FAWN-YC provides a psychometrically valid and user-friendly measure of nighttime fears in young children. This measure is likely to be of significant value in both research and clinical settings, informing our understanding and treatment of fear, anxiety and sleep difficulties in preschool aged children.

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Study conception by L.F. and E.M-L. Study design by L.F., E.M-L., A.S. and C.D. Material preparation, data collection, data curation, project administration and analysis were performed by A.S. All drafts and final manuscript were written by A.S. Previous versions of the manuscript were reviewed by L.U and C.D. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Shiels, A., Uhlmann, L., Farrell, L.J. et al. Fears and Worries at Nighttime in Young Children: Development and Psychometric Validation of a Parent-Report Measure (FAWN-YC). Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-024-01758-3

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Emotional and Personality Development in Adolescence Research Paper

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What is personality? How is temperament related to personality? Where does emotion fit in? What is the significance of emotion, personality, and temperament for understanding behavior and emotional well-being in adolescence? How does culture influence the expression of emotion and personality? These are critical and challenging questions that underlie the study of individual differences in emotional and personality development. Emotional and personality development are complicated, interrelated processes that occur across the life span. The story of emotion and personality in adolescence is essentially a study in identifying indicators and predictors of adolescents’ emotional well-being and distress, ascertaining core personality traits seen in adolescence, documenting the evolution of personality characteristics across time, and investigating the links among emotion, emotional well-being and distress, personality, and temperament.

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There is a vast array of theory and research on emotion and personality across the life span.This research paper focuseson recent research into the emotional well-being and distress of adolescents, as well as personality and temperament development in adolescence. The examination of emotion and personality in adolescence is interesting for at least two reasons. First, it is in the period of adolescence that we may begin to observe not only the crystallization of emotional and personality styles, but also how emotion and personality will shape the course of individuals’ lives. Perhaps for the first time, interested observers such as parents can be more confident in predicting what kind of adult the individual is likely to become. Continuities in emotional well-being and personality across time are the source for these predictions about future behavior, but to be sure, discontinuities can make those predictions wrong. Second, the field of research on adolescent development that has burgeoned in the last few decades has demonstrated not onlythattherearesignificantbiological,cognitive,social,and behavioral changes that occur during adolescence, but also that these changes are inextricably linked with one another. It is crucial to understand the role of emotion and personality in producing and affecting these changes.

Given the large amount of research in each of the areas of emotion, personality, and temperament, it is not possible within the confines of this research paper to conduct a comprehensive review of relevant studies. Several excellent books and reviews suit this purpose (e.g., Caspi, 1998; Kagan, 1998; Larson & Richards, 1994; Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Sanson & Rothbart, 1995; Shiner, 1998; van Lieshout, 2000). In this research paper we aim to identify the major issues seen in research on emotional and personality development pertaining specifically to adolescence, to provide examples of illustrative research in these domains, and to explore how future research can increase our understanding of adolescent emotion and personality. In the first section of this research paper we present research on some important issues in emotional development during adolescence. In the second section we discuss some of the key issues related to personality and temperament in adolescence. In the third and final section we identify four emerging themes in research on emotion and personality that will shape the direction of research for some time to come.

Emotional Development

Guided by G. Stanley Hall’s storm and stress hypothesis (the view that adolescence is filled with hormone-induced emotional turmoil), one focus of research on emotions in adolescence has been to examine variability in emotional or mood states (Brooks-Gunn, Graber, & Paikoff, 1994). Larson and Lampman-Petraitis (1989), for example, charted hour-tohour changes in mood over a week in a sample of preadolescent and adolescent children. It is interesting to note that there was little evidence of variability in the mood states of adolescents compared to preadolescents. The average adolescent, however, was more likely than the average preadolescent to report more mildly negative mood states and fewer extremely positive mood states. Although overall mood may take on a slightly different character in adolescence, rapid mood swings were not evidenced in this research. Another focus of research has examined direct links between hormonal levels in adolescence and emotions such as aggression and depression (Susman, 1997). Some consistent associations have been found between specific hormones and feelings of aggression (particularly among boys) and depression (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994; Buchanan, Eccles, & Becker, 1992), but only small proportions of variance in emotion (up to 6%) are attributable to hormones (Susman, 1997). More complicated models of hormone-emotion relationships have been proposed, based on research indicating that hormones interact with personality and contextual characteristics to affect emotional states and behavior (Richards & Larson, 1993). These models, which require the use of longitudinal designs, will lead to a better understanding of how hormones are linked to adolescents’ emotions indirectly through their impact on the outward physical changes of puberty, the adolescents’responses to these changes and their implications, and others’reactions to the changing adolescent (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994; Susman, 1997).

Often implicit in the research on the link between hormones and emotion is the assumption that emotions may be something to be feared, that they are linked directly to negative and irrational behavior. Increasingly, though, the conceptualization of emotions in contemporary research has moved away from viewing emotions as sources of negative and irrational behavior toward a view of emotions as adaptive and capable of organizing behavior in ways that can enhance as well as disrupt functioning (Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994; Thompson, 1994). A dominant paradigm for studying emotions and emotion-related phenomena is emotion regulation.

Emotion regulation may be broadly defined as the way in which a person uses emotional experiences to provide for adaptive functioning (Thompson, 1994). The construct of emotion regulation has been used to refer to both outcome and process. In terms of outcome, some researchers define emotion regulation as the extent to which an individual shows emotional control versus emotional reactivity (Maedgen & Carlson, 2000). In this view, important components of emotion regulation include emotional lability, maladaptive emotional displays, and negative mood states. Others focus more on process variables such as the coping strategies that individuals employ to modify emotional reactions (Contreras, Kerns, Weimer, Gentzler, & Tomich, 2000; Rossman, 1992; Underwood, 1997). Emotion regulation in this sense refers to how the individual deals with each experience of emotion (Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, & Campos, 1994; Gross & Muñoz, 1995). This view of emotion regulation focuses not only on the modulation of distress but also on attempts to stimulate positive emotions or improve emotional arousal to achieve important interpersonal goals (Calkins, 1994; Thompson, 1994).

A variety of skills are necessary for effective emotion regulation, including flexibility and responsiveness to changing situational demands (Cole et al., 1994; Thompson, 1994). Other skills include an awareness of one’s emotional state, the capacity to detect emotions in other people, knowledge of cultural display rules for emotions, and the ability to empathize with others’ emotional states (Saarni, 1990; cited in Underwood, 1997). These skills are initially primarily externally supported, such as when a parent helps a child label and talk about their emotions, selectively reinforces adaptive emotional displays, and models effective emotion regulation. With development, socialization influences on emotion regulation give way to more internally mediated emotion regulation processes (Calkins, 1994; Thompson, 1994). By adolescence, individuals are better able to structure their own environment as a way of regulating their emotions, and they are capable of cognitively sophisticated emotion regulation strategies such as reframing and taking another’s point of view (Gross & Muñoz, 1995).

This broader view of emotion regulation—that is, as the behavioral strategies one uses to modify, intensify, diminish, or transform emotional reactions—is an integral part of the functionalist perspective on emotion (Campos et al., 1994; Thompson, 1994). The functionalist perspective highlights several characteristics of emotion regulation. For instance, optimal emotion regulation is best conceptualized as context dependent, rather than as a stable feature of individual functioning (Thompson, 1994). Different contexts present diverse emotional challenges, and optimal emotion regulation varies depending on the goals of the individual in specific situations (Thompson, 1994). Accordingly, individuals have different goals depending on the interpersonal context (friend vs. stranger vs. authority figure), and the most adaptive way of dealing with emotions such as anger in each of these situations may differ (Underwood, 1997). Similarly, individuals may show effective emotion regulation in one context (e.g., with peers)butnotinanother(e.g.,withsiblings;Thompson,1994; Whitesell & Harter, 1996). A related emphasis in the functionalist perspective is that emotion regulation is an interpersonal phenomenon more than an intrapsychic phenomenon (Campos et al., 1994). For instance, core emotions such as happiness, guilt, pride, and shame all reflect core relationship themes (Campos et al., 1994). In addition, beliefs about the availability of support and the likely response of others can facilitate or hamper effective emotion regulation (Thompson, 1994). In turn, emotion regulation skills can facilitate or hamper the achievement of important interpersonal developmental tasks, such as forming secure relationships with others (Cole et al., 1994).

Most research on emotion regulation has focused on infants (e.g., Field, 1994) and young children (e.g., Shields & Cicchetti, 1997; Underwood, 1997). Less attention has been directed at how emotion regulation operates in adolescence. Despite this lack of formal theorizing about emotion regulation in adolescence, the emotion regulation framework can be useful for conceptualizing and integrating a variety of constructs that have been the subject of much empirical attention in the literature on adolescence. For instance, indicators of adolescents’ psychological well-being (e.g., selfesteem, positive mood) can be interpreted from an emotion regulation perspective as illustrative of the successful regulation of emotions, or adaptive emotional functioning. Likewise, indicators of psychological distress (e.g., depression) can be viewed as capturing emotion dysregulation. In this section we examine research that bears on adaptive emotional regulation, followed by research important to understanding emotion dysregulation.

Indicators of Adaptive Emotion Regulation

How do we know when adolescents are doing well? By what measure can we achieve some level of confidence that teens are successfully negotiating their way around their world, mastering important developmental tasks, and learning to regulate their emotions in ways that will ensure their eventual success in adulthood? Throughout the empirical literature on adolescence, there are a host of constructs and indicators of emotional well-being, including, but not limited to, a high self-esteem (Haney & Durlak, 1998; Zimmerman, Copeland, Shope, & Dielman, 1997), a positive self-concept and stable sense of identity (Harter, 1990; Nurmi, 1997), a high level of ego development (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994; Hauser & Safyer, 1994), social competence (Bustra, Bosma, & Jackson, 1994; Gullotta, Adams, & Montemayor, 1990), a positive mood or emotional tone (Larson & Richards, 1994; Petersen et al., 1993), school engagement and competence (Sandler, Ayers, Suter, Schultz, & Twohey, in press; Wigfield & Eccles, 1994), and feelings of attachment to parents and friends (Allen, Moore, Kuperminc, & Bell, 1998; Greenberger & McLaughlin, 1998; Paterson, Pryor, & Field, 1995). Although each of these indicators alone is the subject of a large body of research, studies have found that these measures of emotional well-being are typically positively correlated with one another (e.g., DuBois, Bull, Sherman, & Roberts, 1998; Paterson et al., 1995; Petersen et al., 1993). A review of each of these indicators is beyond the scope of this research paper. However, many of these constructs have been generally incorporated into larger integrative models that represent the adolescent’s overall level of adaptation. From the perspective of emotion regulation, models of the self-system and psychosocial maturity are particularly appropriate to consider.

The Self-System

In decades of research, many aspects of self have been defined and measured. One of the most common is self-esteem, which is typically defined as an affective evaluation of the self, involving feelings of self-worth (DuBois & Hirsch, 2000). A long history of research shows that high levels of global selfesteem are linked with positive adjustment in adolescents, including higher academic achievement and lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems (DuBois et al., 1998; Haney & Durlak, 1998; Zimmerman et al., 1997). Selfconcept is typically seen as a cognitive representation of the self, or perceptions of one’s personal and interpersonal characteristics (Haney & Durlak, 1998). Although there is no single definition or understanding of self-concept, self-concept is increasingly seen to be multidimensional in nature, incorporating elements of self-evaluation in specific domains, such as the school, peer, and athletic contexts (Harter, 1990; Harter, Bresnick, Bouchey, & Whitesell, 1997).

Self-system is a term recently used to describe in a broad sense the many elements of adolescents’ representations of self, including self-esteem, perceived self-efficacy, possible selves, standards for self, values, and motivations (DuBois & Hirsch, 2000; Harter et al., 1997). There is no question that adolescents’ positive self-attributions and closer connections between their multiple actual and ideal selves are linked with positive developmental outcomes (DuBois & Hirsch, 2000; Harter et al., 1997). With respect to identity development, the establishment of a stable sense of identity (the integration of a coherent sense of self that persists over time) is a key developmental task of adolescence (Erikson, 1968; Harter, 1990). Identity formation requires not only the consolidation of self-attributes into an organized system but also the integration of self with societal roles (Harter, 1990).

Haviland, Davidson, Ruetsch, Gebelt, and Lancelot (1994) have argued that emotion is a central part of identity structures, with adolescents’self-descriptions varying in the extent to which positive and negative emotions are represented. Thus, constructs such as self-esteem, self-concept, and identity fall under the general rubric of the self-system and speak to the issue of successful emotional regulation.

Psychosocial Maturity

Indicators of emotional well-being are also a key feature of psychosocial maturity, as defined by Greenberger and colleagues (Greenberger, Josselson, Knerr, & Knerr, 1975; Greenberger & Sørenson, 1974). This model encompasses three major domains of development, each consisting of multiple dimensions, which must be fostered if the child is to become a productive adult. The first domain is autonomy, or the individual’s ability to function independently. The achievement of autonomy is characterized by self-reliance (the capacity to take initiative and to have a sense of control over one’s life and activities), identity (a coherent selfconcept,completewithlifegoalsandinternalizedvalues),and work orientation (standards for competence and taking pleasure in work). The second domain is interpersonal adequacy, or the individual’s ability to communicate and interact well with others. This requires effective communication skills, such as empathy and the ability to understand and receive messages, a sense of trust in others, and knowledge of roleappropriate behavior.The third domain of psychosocial maturity is social responsibility, or the individual’s capacity to contribute to the well-being of society. This involves a sense of social commitment to the good of the community, an openness to social and political change to achieve higher order goals, and a tolerance and acceptance of individual and cultural differences (Greenberger & Sørenson, 1974). It is easy to observe that specific indicators of emotional well-being (e.g., social competence, attachment to parents and peers, school engagement, strong ego development, and a coherent identity) overlap with elements in this model of psychosocial maturity.

Aside from the fact that various indicators of emotional well-being are contained within larger models of the self and of psychosocial maturity, how can the diverse array of constructs, such as school engagement, self-esteem, identity, positive mood, and attachment to parents and peers, be indicators of “emotional” well-being? What do they have in common? According to Cole et al. (1994), children have a number of emotion-based developmental tasks that they must accomplish, including tolerance for frustration, establishing and enjoying friendships, defending the self, and acquiring interest in learning. In adolescence, major developmental tasks are to search for and establish an identity, pursue and succeed in intimate friendships, accept responsibility for oneself, and prepare for an education and career (Arnett, 2000). Cole et al. argued that the accomplishment of tasks such as these involves the ability to regulate emotions. Emotional regulation, therefore, is a tie that links together and perhaps underlies constructs such as self-esteem, mood, school engagement, identity, social competence, and feelings about parents and peers.

The importance of emotion regulation to the basic task of maturing and becoming an adult is recognizable in adolescents’ descriptions of what it means to be “grown up.” In a qualitative study (Tilton-Weaver, Vitunski, & Galambos, 2001) examining adolescents’ implicit theories of maturity, sixth- and ninth-grade adolescents were told, “Please think of someone your age who seems more ‘grown up’ than most other kids (do not name him or her).What are some words that describe the ways in which this person seems grown up? ”Half of the adolescents described what appeared to be genuinely mature adolescents. Incorporated into these adolescents’ rich descriptions of genuine maturity were behaviors indicative of emotional regulation: “Doesn’t let anger get in the way of good judgment,” “if someone wants to fight him, he just walks away,” “they are very calm, are helpful, do not get agitated easily,” “can control and explain his feelings,” and “he talks about feelings instead of hiding them.” Not only was control of one’s own emotions important in their descriptions of genuinely mature adolescents, but so was the ability to deal with others’ strong emotions, as in this description of a peacemaker: “she is very calm when people are fighting, she tries to break it up or get them back together.” Tolerance is another feeling that came across in these adolescents’ descriptions: “Respects others’feelings, opinions, decisions, character” and “the person doesn’t judge people by what they look like . . . which I think is good.” Emotion regulation may not be the only hallmark of psychosocial maturity, but it is an important one.

Indicators of Emotion Dysregulation

The construct of emotion regulation not only unites the literature on emotional well-being just reviewed, but it also is central to the study of emotional distress. Emotion-related symptoms are a defining feature of most categories of psychopathology, and the development of emotion regulation is an implied goal of most psychological treatments (Cole et al., 1994). Emotion dysregulation refers to strategies that individuals use to cope with emotions that are maladaptive, such as restricted or inflexible emotional responding (Cole et al., 1994). Examples of emotion dysregulation include not having access to a full range of emotions, an inability to modulate the intensity or duration of emotions, not conforming to cultural display rules for emotions, an inability to integrate mixed emotions, and an inability to think and talk about emotions (Cole et al., 1994).

Emotion dysregulation is not the same as an absence of regulation; dysregulated emotions such as anger or withdrawal serve some adaptive purpose in the short term even though they may interfere with optimal development in the long term (Cole et al., 1994). However, dysregulated emotional styles are considered a vulnerability because maladaptive short-term strategies may become characteristic coping styles and develop into internalizing or externalizing disorders over time (Calkins, 1994; Cole et al., 1994).

Much research into adolescent emotional development has focused implicitly on emotion dysregulation by examining predictors and consequences of internalizing and externalizing disorders. Internalizing problems generally refer to subjective emotions such as depressive feelings and anxiety, whereas externalizing problems refer to more objectively disruptive behaviors such as overt aggressive and antisocial conduct. Although there is a high degree of comorbidity between the two and difficulties such as peer problems and low school motivation may be excluded from the internalizing-externalizing dichotomy (Wångby, Bergman, & Magnusson, 1999), the distinction is still a useful heuristic device for considering maladaptive adjustment patterns in adolescence. We focus our review on the experience of internalizing problems in general and in major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular. An emotion regulation perspective provides a framework for integrating the diverse theoretical orientations related to the experience of depression (see Gross & Muñoz, 1995, for a review).

The Emergence of Internalizing Disorders During Adolescence

Adolescence has traditionally been viewed as a time of increased negative emotions and emotional lability (Arnett, 1999). Reviews of adolescent depression indicate that adolescents report depressed mood at a higher rate than do preadolescents or adults (Petersen et al., 1993). Longitudinal studies of emotion development consistently find that negative affect increases from preadolescence to adolescence (Buchanan et al., 1992) and that depressed mood increases in early adolescence and decreases around late adolescence (Chen, Mechanic, & Hansell, 1998).

Epidemiological studies of the incidence of formal psychiatric disorders also point to adolescence as a time of increased emotional distress relative to later points in the life span. For instance, in the U.S. National Comorbidity Study, the 12month prevalence of psychiatric disorders was highest in the youngest cohort (ages 15–24 years; Kessler et al., 1994). Similarly, Canada’s National Population Health Survey found that major depressive episodes were highest in women ages 12 to 24 compared to males and older women (Beaudet, 1999).

Generally, the point prevalence of psychiatric disturbance in adolescence is about 1 in 4 or 5 (Casper, Belanoff, & Offer, 1996; Offer, Ostrov, Howard, & Atkinson, 1992). Newman et al. (1996) interviewed almost 1,000 adolescents five times over a 10-year period in a nonselected cohort in New Zealand. They found that internalizing disorders were among the most prevalent diagnoses. For instance, at age 21, 16.8% of the sample was diagnosed with MDD. Significantly, they found a sharp increase in depressive disorders during mid- to late adolescence (ages 15 to 18), which suggests that this may be a critical time for studying vulnerability to depression (Hankin et al., 1998).

Similar increases in the rate of depression during adolescence were found in the Oregon Adolescent Depression Project, a longitudinal study of over 1,700 adolescents (Lewinsohn, Rohde, & Seeley, 1998). In this study approximately 28% of adolescents had experienced an episode of MDD by age 19, with a mean age of onset of 14.9 years. Almost half (43%) of adolescents with MDD had a comorbid diagnosis, and in 80% of the cases the MDD was secondary to the comorbid condition. An important finding was that subthreshold levels of depressive symptoms were associated with almost as much psychosocial impairment as clinical levels of depression.

Gender Differences in Internalizing Disorders

Studies of both nonclinical levels of depressed and anxious mood, as well as studies of clinical levels of depression, all report higher rates of distress for females compared with males in adolescence (Chen et al., 1998; Leadbeater, Kuperminc, Blatt, & Hertzog, 1999; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994). Prospective longitudinal studies indicate that internalizing symptoms remain high or increase for females, whereas they remain at relatively lower levels for males across adolescence (Leadbeater et al., 1999; Scaramella, Conger, & Simons, 1999). Gender differences in clinical levels of depression follow similar patterns. Gender differences in MDD are nonexistent in preadolescence, first emerge in early adolescence (ages 12–14), and increase dramatically in middle to late adolescence (ages 15–18; Hankin et al., 1998; Lewinsohn et al., 1998). By midadolescence the prevalence of MDD among females is more than double that of males; by age 18 approximately 11% of males compared with 24% of females are diagnosed with depression (Hankin et al., 1998; Lewinsohn et al., 1998).

Several explanations for these gender differences have been proposed. According to Nolen-Hoeksema (1994), gender differences in the emotion regulation strategies that males and females use to cope with distress partially account for differential rates of depression. In particular, she argued that females tend to employ passive, ruminative coping styles that place them at greater risk for depression compared with the more active and distracting coping styles of males. Other factors that may be related to gender differences in depression are adolescents’ self-representations. For instance, females report lower levels of self-competence than males, and these differences partially account for differences in symptoms of depression and anxiety (Ohannessian, Lerner, Lerner, & von Eye, 1999). In addition, females show more preoccupation with relationships, threats of abandonment, and loss of nurturing compared with males, and these interpersonal vulnerabilities are associated with increased internalizing symptoms (Leadbeater et al., 1999). In general, the quality of relationships with parents and peers shows a stronger relationship to internalizing symptoms in females than males (Leadbeater et al., 1999), and females may feel more pressure to conform to the expectations of parents and peers (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994). Finally, gender differences in the experience of depression may be related to the finding that females experience greater stress during adolescence (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1994). For instance, the changes in body shape and size that females experience during puberty are generally unwelcome, whereas the pubertal changes to male body shape and size are generally valued. In addition, females experience dramatically greater rates of sexual abuse in early adolescence compared with males, which is associated with elevated rates of depression.

Predictors and Correlates of Internalizing Disorders

Depressed mood has been associated with poor school motivation and performance, marital discord and family conflict, the experience of stressful life events, low popularity, and, for females, both early- and late-onset puberty (Leadbeater et al., 1999; Lewinsohn et al., 1998; Petersen et al., 1993; Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 1998). Many studies highlight the importance of the interpersonal context of adolescent depressive disorders. For instance, the quality of attachment between parents and adolescents plays a role in internalizing adjustment problems. Adolescents with secure attachments experience fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, whereas adolescents with preoccupied, anxious, or avoidant attachment relationships experience relatively more psychological distress (Allen et al., 1998; Cooper, Shaver, & Collins, 1998; Marton & Maharaj, 1993; Noom, Dekovic, & Meeus, 1999). Furthermore, interactions in families with a depressed adolescent are observed to be less cohesive and supportive compared with families with well-adjusted adolescents (Sheeber & Sorensen, 1998). In addition, inept and inadequate parenting, characterized by less warmth and acceptance, more hostility, greater psychological control, and less consistent discipline, is associated with increased risk for internalizing symptoms and clinical depression across adolescence (Conger, Conger, & Scaramella, 1997; Ge, Conger, Lorenz, & Simons, 1994; Marton & Maharaj, 1993; Scaramella et al., 1999). For males, greater psychological control by siblings is also associated with increases in internalizing symptoms over time (K. Conger et al., 1997).

These disruptions in parenting and parent-adolescent relationships may affect depressive symptoms through their effects on adolescents’self-representations. For instance, lower maternal acceptance and greater psychological control are associated with lower levels of self-worth, which in turn are associated with elevated levels of depression (Garber, Robinson, & Valentiner, 1997). Similarly, disrupted parentadolescentrelationships(i.e.,separation-individuationconflicts, parental rejection, or excessive dependency) are associated with greater self-critical and interpersonal vulnerabilities, which in turn are associated with increased depressed mood (Frank, Poorman, Van Egeren, & Field, 1997). Other intrapsychic variables, such as lower levels of attitudinal and emotional autonomy (Noom et al., 1999) and greater self-awareness (Chen et al., 1998), are also associated with increased depressed mood.

Personality Development

Much of what we know about personality development is actually based on research with either young children or adults. These have been largely disconnected lines of inquiry with a long history of research on young children devoted to studying temperament and a great deal of research on adults examining personality. These separate lines of inquiry are now being joined as researchers attempt to understand the overlap and the connections between temperament in childhood and personality in adulthood (Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). As the transition period between childhood and adulthood, adolescence is perhaps an ideal time for considering personality and temperament. In research on adolescent personality and temperament, several key issues have been identified. These issues include (a) the core structure of personality, (b) the origins of personality, (c) continuity in personality across the life span, and (d) the fit between temperament/personality dimensions and the social context. These issues as they pertain to research on adolescence are elaborated in this section.

The Structure of Personality

The search for core features of personality has a long history. In personality research across the twentieth century, a myriad of personality traits has been identified, measured, examined, and linked to each other as well as to the individual’s psychosocial adjustment. Given the large array of possible personality constructs, the search for a taxonomy, or descriptive model, of core personality traits has occupied the efforts of many researchers, particularly those examining personality in adults (John, 1990). One taxonomy, the Big Five, is a comprehensive model consisting of five broad personality traits or factors under which most if not all other descriptors of personality are subsumed (Goldberg, 1993). This model is based largely on clusters of adjectives that people use to describe themselves. The five factors and examples of adjectives attached to these factors are Extroversion (assertive, enthusiastic, outgoing), Agreeableness (generous, kind, sympathetic), Conscientiousness (organized, planful, responsible), Neuroticism (anxious, self-pitying), and Openness/Intellect (curious, imaginative, wide interests; Caspi, 1998; Goldberg, 1993; John, 1990). Growing support for the Big Five as a meaningful framework for understanding personality dispositions has emerged over the years. This support is based on accumulating empirical evidence that the five-factor structure is robust across many studies and cultures and that it can be used to predict behaviors such as job performance (Goldberg, 1993; McCrae et al., 1999). Nevertheless, there are other models of personality structure, some with two or three factors and some with many more (Church, 1994; Eysenck, 1992; Goldberg, 1993).

Given that most research on the Big Five has been conducted on samples of adults, an important question has been whether these five factors describe the personality structures of children and adolescents. Studies examining this issue in American and Dutch samples have appeared in the last decade, with a five-factor model finding support in samples of individuals ranging in age from early childhood through adolescence, including girls and boys (Digman, 1989; Graziano & Ward, 1992; Havill, Allen, Halverson, & Kohnstamm, 1994; Kohnstamm, Halverson, Havill, & Mervielde, 1996; van Lieshout & Haselager, 1994). One study of 12- to 13-year-old African American and Caucasian boys, rated by their mothers on a set of personality characteristics, found evidence that the Big Five replicated in this ethnically diverse sample (John, Caspi, Robins, Moffitt, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1994). The results were suggestive also of two additional dimensions of personality at this age: irritability (whines, feelings are easily hurt, has tantrums) and positive activity (energetic, physically active). This research also found that the five factors were linked differentially with indicators of adolescents’ emotional well-being. For example, adolescent boys with externalizing problems were less agreeable, less conscientious, and more extroverted than were those not showing externalizing behavior. Boys with internalizing disorders were high on neuroticism and low on conscientiousness. Poorer school performance was seen among boys who scored lower on conscientiousness and lower on openness (e.g., curiosity).

There are several advantages to identifying a comprehensive model of personality. If researchers agree on and measure the same set of core dimensions of personality in their research, the results of their studies are more directly comparable. Essentially, acceptance of a model such as the Big Five ensures that researchers are speaking the same language. A body of research based on a similarly shared understanding of constructs can lead to clearer and more integrated knowledge of the origins, course of development, and implications of personality (John, 1990). Without a common set of constructs that can be measured across the life span, it is more difficult to draw conclusions about how personality develops from infancy through adulthood—a key question in developmental psychology. The field of research on adolescence generally has not been driven by such a model. Rather, there is wide diversity in the personality constructs that have been measured in research on adolescence. Typically, selected personality traits such as selfrestraint, aggression, and sensation seeking have been measured, often in isolation from other personality characteristics (Shiner, 1998). These selected characteristics are then related to individual differences in adolescent behaviors such as risk taking, early childbearing, and delinquency (e.g., Black, Ricardo, & Stanton, 1997; Feldman & Weinberger, 1994; Underwood, Kupersmidt, & Coie, 1996). The Big Five is a promising model that could be used by researchers of adolescent development as a way to understand links between adolescents’ personalities and their behaviors and emotional well-being.

The Origins of Personality in Temperament

Whereas the study of personality has been located largely in the empirical literature on adults, the study of temperament has been confined mostly to infants and children (for exceptions, see Tubman & Windle, 1995; Wills, DuHamel, & Vaccaro, 1995; Windle, 1992). Only recently has research on personality and temperament begun to be integrated (Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). Although researchers concur neither on a single definition of temperament nor on a core set of temperamental dimensions, it is generally assumed that a child’s temperament is composed of multiple behavioral attributes present at birth (Kagan, 1998). Moreover, there is purported evidence from twin and adoption studies of a substantial genetic influence on temperamental and personality attributes in childhood and adolescence, although there are nonshared environmental influences as well (Braungart, Plomin, DeFries, & Fulker, 1992; Caspi, 1998; Rowe, Almeida, & Jacobson, 1999; Saudino, McGuire, Reiss, Hetherington, & Plomin, 1995). Many authors believe that temperament forms the substrate of personality. Specifically, through the influence of the child’s increasing capacities and interactions with the environment, temperament evolves or becomes elaborated across childhood into a set of differentiated personality traits (Caspi, 1998; Goldsmith et al., 1987; Sanson & Rothbart, 1995; Shiner, 1998).

The modern study of temperament began with the classic work of Thomas and Chess (1977; see also Chess & Thomas, 1999), who followed a group of infants into adulthood. Based on observations of the behavioral styles of these infants, Thomas and Chess identified nine dimensions of temperament along which infants varied. Among these dimensions were activity level, adaptability, intensity of reaction, quality of mood, rhythmicity, and approach. Thomas and Chess also classified children as having “difficult” or “easy” temperaments on the basis of their patterns on a select set of temperamental dimensions. Their pioneering work recognized that early individual differences in temperament were an influential source of individual differences in parent-child relations and in later emotional well-being.

Other models of temperament followed, most of which identified several core dimensions of temperament (Buss & Plomin, 1984; Goldsmith & Campos, 1986; Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981). For instance, Buss and Plomin’s (1984) EAS model identified Emotionality (primarily negative emotions), Activity, and Sociability as basic dimensions of temperament. Rothbart and Derryberry (1981) defined temperament as individual differences in two broad dimensions: reactivity to internal and external stimulation (or the arousability of one’s behavioral, emotional, and biological responses) and self-regulation (or processes such as attention, approach, withdrawal, and self-soothing that modulate reactivity). Models of temperament have undergone modifications and development as research has accumulated (Buss & Plomin, 1984; Windle & Lerner, 1986). Rothbart and colleagues have reported that across a number of studies from early childhood to adulthood, three broad factors of temperament emerge (Ahadi & Rothbart, 1994; Capaldi & Rothbart, 1992; Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). The first, labeled Positive Emotionality, Surgency, or Sociability, is captured by higher scores on approach, high-intensity pleasure, and activity subscales. The second, labeled Negative Emotionality or Affectivity, is based on feelings of fear, anger, discomfort, and sadness. A third factor, called Effortful Control or Persistence, is defined by inhibitory control, attentional focusing, low-intensity pleasure, and perceptual sensitivity.

Generally, personality is seen to be broader and more differentiated than temperament, with personality incorporating behavior, motives, emotions, attitudes, and values (Digman, 1994). Because early-emerging temperamental characteristics are believed to mature and become elaborated over time into distinct personality traits (Caspi, 1998), researchers have attempted to delineate how dimensions of temperament converge with the Big Five personality dimensions (Halverson, Kohnstramm, & Martin, 1994). Interestingly, the three factors of Positive Emotionality, Negative Emotionality, and Effortful Control appear to map onto three of the Big Five personality dimensions. Specifically, Positive Emotionality maps onto the Extroversion personality dimension in the Big Five, Negative Emotionality maps onto Neuroticism, and Effortful Control maps onto Conscientiousness (Ahadi & Rothbart, 1994; Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). Other scholars, too, have pointed to the overlap between early emerging dimensions of temperament and adolescent and adult personality structure (Caspi, 1998; Digman, 1994; John et al., 1994; Shiner, 1998).

Continuity in Temperament and Personality

The assumption that temperamental attributes present in childhood are predictive of later temperamental or personality attributes leads us to ask whether there is continuity in these attributes—a question that can only be answered with longitudinal studies following the same individuals from childhood to adulthood. Such studies have examined stability coefficients, that is, correlations between specific temperamental attributes in infancy or childhood and those same aspects of temperament at a later point. Earlier studies of temperamental stability indicated only moderate stability across time, but more recent studies that have controlled for conceptual and methodological problems show relatively high stabilities (in the .70s to .80s) in temperamental characteristics such as sociability and irritability from infancy to age 7 or 8 years (Pedlow, Sanson, Prior, & Oberklaid, 1993; Sanson & Rothbart, 1995). Thus, there is evidence for continuity in temperamental characteristics, although there is also room for change.

Insight into the issue of continuity is also gained by examining how early temperament is linked with later personality traits. One study, conducted in New Zealand, followed individuals from age 3 to young adulthood (Caspi, 2000; Caspi & Silva, 1995). At the age of 3, analyses identified three replicable groups of children based on ratings of their behavior. These groups were labeled as Undercontrolled (e.g., impulsive), Inhibited (e.g., fearful), and Well Adjusted (e.g., coped well, friendly). At the age of 18, these groups were reassessed for personality traits. There were clear and significant associations between temperamental styles at age 3 and personality at age 18. For example, children who were undercontrolled at age 3 had similar characteristics at age 18: They were characterized as impulsive, danger-seeking, high on negative emotionality, and engaged in conflict with others. Inhibited children became rather cautious as young adults, showing a restrained behavioral style: harm-avoidant, not aggressive, and not interpersonally assertive. Well-adjusted children became normal young adults, showing no extreme scores on any personality dimension.

Thus, this study provided evidence for continuity in behavioral styles from early childhood through adolescence. Moreover, in the longer term the early temperamental characteristics of these children were predictive of a wide variety of aspects of functioning, including the quality of interpersonal relations, the availability of social support, unemployment, psychiatric disorders, and criminal behavior (Caspi, 2000). Other studies, too, demonstrate continuities in temperament and personality characteristics such as behavioral inhibition and shyness (Kagan, 1989; Katainen, Räikkönen, & Keltikangas-Järvinen, 1998). Continuities in personality may result from a kind of snowballing effect in which early temperamental styles create consequences, situations, and interactions with others that serve to reinforce natural tendencies (Caspi & Silva, 1995).

The Goodness-of-Fit Model of Temperament

Even though there are clear links between one’s early personality and later functioning, some authors assert that the import of temperament is best understood by examining the context in which it takes place. A goodness-of-fit model of temperament posits that the impact of children’s temperament on their development is a function of how well their temperamental characteristics fit the demands of the social context (Chess & Thomas, 1999; Thomas & Chess, 1977). When the child’s temperament matches those demands, there is a greater likelihood that social interactions will be favorable to the child’s development. A poor fit, however, may jeopardize his or her social interactions and subsequent psychosocial adjustment (Chess & Thomas, 1999; Lerner & Lerner, 1983; Nitz, Lerner, Lerner, & Talwar, 1988; Talwar, Nitz, & Lerner, 1990; Thomas & Chess, 1977). In one study (East et al., 1992), young adolescents’ fit with their peer group was measured by assessing the difference between adolescents’ own temperamental characteristics and their classroom peers’judgments of preferred temperamental characteristics in classmates. These difference or fit scores were then correlated with measures of adolescents’ psychosocial competence. As expected, the adolescent’s fit with peer group demands for particular temperamental attributes was linked with a variety of measures. For instance, adolescents whose characteristics of adaptability (mood, flexibility, and approach behaviors) matched their peers’demands for adaptability received favorable nominations from peers on sociometric measures. Fit scores for adaptability and rhythmicity also were linked with self- and teacher-rated psychosocial competence. Moreover, some of the relations between fit and psychosocial competence were found consistently across three times of measurement from the beginning to the end of Grade 6. These findings provide evidence that a closer match between the adolescent’s temperament and the social context is linked with more desirable psychosocial functioning.

Goodness-of-Fit in Parent and Adolescent Temperaments

One way to conceptualize adolescents’ fit with the social context is to consider how adolescents’and parents’temperaments work together. That is, both members of a parentadolescent dyad bring to their relationship temperamental characteristics that may be complementary—or that may clash. In this sense, one family member’s temperament imposes demands on the other, whose own temperament may not fit with those demands (Kawaguchi, Welsh, Powers, & Rostosky, 1998). For example, an adolescent who is rigid with respect to approaching new situations might have a more harmonious relationship with a parent who is flexible than with a parent who is equally rigid. Mismatched temperamental styles might eventuate in conflicted or perhaps even hostile relations. Few researchers have examined parentadolescent relations as a joint function of the temperaments of parents and adolescents, although there are such studies of younger children (Belsky, 1996; Kawaguchi et al., 1998).

In a test of a goodness-of-fit model in parent and adolescent temperaments, Galambos and Turner (1999) examined in 7th-grade adolescents and their parents whether two broad dimensions of parent and adolescent temperaments (i.e., adaptability and activity level) combined or interacted to predict the quality of parent-adolescent relations. There were significant interactions between parent and adolescent dimensions of temperament in the prediction of some aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship. For example, motherson conflict was highest in dyads comprised of mothers low on adaptability and their low-activity sons. The authors speculated that low activity levels in sons were not interpreted happily by less adaptable mothers who might have expected boys to be highly active (in keeping with sex stereotypes). On the other hand, mother-daughter conflict was highest in dyads in which mothers were less adaptable and daughters were more active. Again, less adaptable mothers may have had difficulties with girls whose patterns of high activity were not in keeping with traditional sex stereotypes of appropriate female behavior. Another set of results demonstrated that the combination of low adaptability in both fathers and daughters was associated with more psychologically controlling behavior in the fathers. Moreover, less adaptable daughters reported higher levels of conflict with their less adaptable fathers than did other daughters. Low adaptability may be a risk factor for less optimal parentadolescent relations, particularly when found in both members of the parent-adolescent dyad. Although these results were based on correlational data, they are consistent with a goodness-of-fit model. Selected aspects of parent and adolescent temperaments fit better with each other than do others, as indicated by the quality of parent-adolescent relations.

Emerging Trends and Future Directions

In the previous sections we have reviewed contemporary research related to emotional well-being, emotional distress, personality, and temperament during adolescence. In this final section we would like to highlight four emerging areas of investigation in research on emotions and personality in adolescence. These trends include (a) a more explicit focus on indications of optimal emotional adjustment in adolescence, (b) an examination of cultural variations in emotions and personality during adolescence, (c) an integration of temperament into the study of adolescent adjustment, and (d) the increasing use of person approaches to studying emotion and personality.

A Focus on Optimal Development

The first emerging theme in research on adolescents’ emotional and personality development is a focus on positive adolescent development (Lerner, Fisher, & Weinberg, 2000; Lerner & Galambos, 1998). Adolescent research has been criticized for focusing too much on adolescent problem behaviors and distress, or defining positive development as the absence of difficulties, rather than focusing explicitly on the development of positive, adaptive qualities (Galambos & Leadbeater, 2000; Larson, 2000; Schulenberg, Maggs, & Hurrelmann, 1997; Wagner, 1996). However, research into healthy adolescent development is emerging. Some of this work identifies the protective factors that enable youth in high-risk environments to reach their full potentials. For example, a review of programs designed to promote healthy youth development (Roth, Brooks-Gunn, Murray, & Foster, 1998) highlights the diverse ways in which communities and schools are working to build strengths among adolescents.

Other research in this area explores the development of specific positive qualities among all adolescents. For instance, Wentzel and McNamara (1999) examined the development of prosocial behaviors among early adolescents. Prosocial behaviors, such as cooperation, sharing, and helping, were assessed through peer nominations. They found that prosocial behaviors are facilitated by feelings of peer acceptance. The role of family support in the development of prosocial behaviors was indirect, mediated by emotional distress. Thus, adolescents who are accepted by their peers and who are able to regulate their emotions effectively may have more opportunities to learn prosocial skills. Larson (2000) focused on the development of initiative during adolescence. He defined initiative as the internal motivation to pursue a challenging goal and saw it as a prerequisite for the development of other positive qualities such as leadership and altruism. Adolescents who display initiative feel invested in and excited about their futures. Larson’s research highlights the types of contexts that promote initiative and other positive qualities.These contexts consist of structured extracurricular activities, such as sports or organized hobbies, which provide the intrinsic motivation and concentrated attention that are believed to foster initiative.

In order to examine positive adolescent development systematically, a model or definition of the components of optimal development is necessary. Lerner et al. (2000) outlined a model of adolescent development in which five broad features of positive adolescent development are identified. These five characteristics include (a) Caring/Compassion (e.g., empathy), (b) Competence (cognitive, behavioral, and social), (c) Character (e.g., integrity), (d) Connection (e.g., positive bonds with others and with society), and (e) Confidence (e.g., self-efficacy). Similarly, Wagner (1996) developed a model of optimal development in adolescence. He defined aspects of optimal development within six domains: Biological, Cognitive, Emotional, Social, Moral, and Vocational. Within the Emotional domain, for example, optimal development is indicated by qualities such as emotional awareness, self-confidence, optimism, and resilience. Such attention to positive adolescent development holds great promise to increase our understanding of the developmental factors and assets that enable adolescents not just to survive but to thrive (Scales, Benson, Leffert, & Blyth, 2000).

Cultural Variations in Emotional and Personality Development

A second theme that is emerging in research on adolescents’ emotional and personality development concerns the role of culture and ethnicity in adolescent development. It is beyond the scope of this research paper to review all of the literature on cultural influences and differences in adolescent development. However, here we survey some of the major areas of inquiry.

The past decade has seen increasing interest in examining the emotional well-being of ethnically diverse adolescents (e.g.,Luster&McAdoo,1994;McAdoo,1993).AmongAsian and Asian American adolescents, researchers have investigated indicators of adjustment such as psychosocial competence (Mantzicopoulos & Oh-Hwang, 1998; Sim, 2000), autonomy (Juang, Lerner, McKinney, & von Eye, 1999), and self-esteem (Watkins, Dong, & Xia, 1997), as well as indicators of maladjustment, such as anxiety (Hishinuma, Miyamoto, Nishimura, & Nahalu, 2000), depression (Ying, Lee, Tsai, Yeh, & Huang, 2000), and psychological distress (Chiu, Feldman, & Rosenthal, 1992). Because most theories of emotional development in adolescence were developed based on research with European American participants, research with ethnically diverse participants is necessary to evaluate whether theories of adolescence generalize to other segments of the population. Some of this literature highlights similarities in the predictors of adolescent emotional development across ethnic groups. Using Chinese adolescents as an example, many aspects of positive parenting, such as warm parent-child relationships, firm control, monitoring, and the absence of coercive exchanges, are related to higher levels of adolescent emotional well-being in locations such as Hong Kong (Shek, 1997a, 1997b) and Shanghai (Chen, Dong, & Zhou, 1997; Chen, Liu, & Li, 2000; Chen, Rubin, & Li, 1997). However, within NorthAmerica the evidence is mixed. Some researchers find similar relationships between parenting and adolescents’ emotional adjustment across cultural groups (Greenberger & Chen, 1996; Kim & Ge, 2000), whereas others find that these relationships do not replicate in different cultural groups (e.g., Barrett Singer & Weinstein, 2000) or that the specific domains of adolescent adjustment that are affected vary by cultural group (e.g., Bradley & Corwyn, 2000). An important area for future research is to continue to evaluate whether the cultural context within NorthAmerica moderates the effects of external factors on adolescent’s emotional well-being and distress (e.g., Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, & Bornstein, 2000).

Research with adolescents from ethnically diverse backgrounds also highlights the need to consider emotional development in a cultural context. For instance, Costigan and Cauce (in press) examined developmental changes in adolescent autonomy and parent-adolescent conflict across adolescence among a sample of African American mothers and daughters. Although past literature has described African American mothers as restrictive or authoritarian, findings from this study suggested that mothers were appropriately selective in their willingness to relinquish control and grant autonomy. For example, mothers retained a higher amount of decision-making authority around important safety-related issues, despite a high level of conflict, whereas they allowed greater adolescent autonomy around personal issues such as hairstyles. These findings illustrate the challenge that African American mothers face in balancing the demands of protecting children while also fostering a sense of competence. For African American families such parenting challenges may be met through the assistance of an extended family network that provides goods, services, and emotional support to its members (McAdoo, 1997). Clearly, how the cultural contexts helps shape adolescents’ emotional development merits further attention.

Another way in which culture may affect adolescents’ emotional development is by influencing adolescents’ tendencies to express different emotions and the strategies used to regulate emotions. Emotions are managed in culturespecific ways (Thompson, 1994). First, there are cultural differences in how adolescents construe emotional events. For example, Liem, Lim, and Liem (2000) argued that the emotional responses of Asian Americans are generally more other oriented, focusing on interdependence, whereas European Americans are generally more self-oriented, focusing on independence. They find that these self-construals change as a result of acculturation. Second, cultures differ in their expectations for emotional displays (Campos et al., 1994). Chinese parents, for example, view dependency, caution, behavioral inhibition, and self-restraint in children more favorably than do parents in Western cultures (Chen, Rubin, & Li, 1997). Finally, cultures have varying emotional baselines and tolerances for the expression of emotions such as support, disagreement, and disapproval (Stillars, 1995). When there is a higher overall baseline for an emotion, there is also a greater tolerance for its expression, so that its expression in any given instance carries less impact. Alternatively, the impact of expressing an emotion for which there is less tolerance is accentuated (Stillars, 1995). This may be one mechanism by which culture moderates the effects of external events, such as parenting, on adolescent adjustment. For example, if lower levels of emotional expressiveness are more normative in Chinese culture, then Chinese parents may not be experienced as less warm by their children (e.g., Chao, 1994). In comparison with Western adolescents, an objectively lower amount of warmth may need to be present before the Chinese adolescents experience it as such.

A consideration of cultural influences also highlights culture-specific predictors of emotional well-being and culture-specific domains of emotional development. For example, for African American adolescents, perceptions of differential treatment based on race are associated with increases in depression and anger over time (Roeser et al., 1998). Furthermore, issues such as family obligations (e.g., Fuligni, Tseng, & Lam, 1999), parental respect (e.g., Chao, 2000), intergenerational value discrepancies (e.g., Phinney, Ong, & Madden, 2000), and acculturative stress are important constructs to examine in order to gain a full understanding of the emotional adjustment of immigrant and minority adolescents (e.g., Fuertes & Westbrook, 1996; Hovey & King, 1996; Kwan & Sodowsky, 1997; Thompson, Anderson, & Bakeman, 2000).

Perhaps the most salient culture-specific domain of emotional adjustment for ethnically diverse adolescents is ethnic identity. Ethnic identity is an important component of overall identity formation, and adolescence is a crucial time for ethnic identity exploration and commitment (Phinney, 1992). Spencer and colleagues (Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, 1997) proposed a phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) model to explain the development of stable identities (including ethnic identity) and other aspects of healthy youth development. This model suggests that ethnic identity formation results from an interaction between the stressors that youths encounter in daily life and the subjective understanding or meaning that adolescents ascribe to these experiences.

Ethnic identity is comprised of two primary factors: ethnic identification (e.g., pride in one’s ethnic group) and exploration (e.g., trying to find out more about one’s ethnic group; Spencer, Icard, Harachi, Catalano, & Oxford, 2000). Adolescence is a key time for ethnic identity development because of advancing cognitive abilities as well as specific ethnic socialization experiences (Quintana, Castañeda-English, & Ybarra, 1999; Spencer et al., 1997). The salience of ethnic identity changes with changes in context, such as moving to a location where one is a minority member (Ichiyama, McQuarrie, & Ching, 1996). However, greater acculturation to a host culture does not necessarily mean a decrease in ethnic identification (Liu, Pope-Davis, Nevitt, & Toporek, 1999). Finally, ethnic identity has implications for adolescents’emotional well-being. In general, a stronger sense of one’s ethnic identityisrelatedtohigherfeelingsofself-esteem(Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Phinney, Cantu, & Kurtz, 1997; Phinney & Chavira, 1992) and self-efficacy (Smith, Walker, Fields, Brookins, & Seay, 1999). However, the relationship between ethnic identity and psychological adjustment is not always consistent and may depend on other factors such as one’s identification with the host culture and the ethnic density of one’s community (Eyou,Adair, & Dixon, 2000; McAdoo, 1993).

Integration of Temperament Into the Study of Adolescent Adjustment

Athird emerging theme in research on adolescents’emotional and personality development concerns integrating the role of temperament into models of adolescent adjustment. Research in this area has accelerated as the construct of emotion regulation has gained prominence in the study of adolescent development. The first step in integrating temperament into this research is to differentiate temperament from related constructs such as mood and emotion regulation. For instance, as outlined by Kagan (1994), the concept of emotion has been used to refer to acute and temporary changes in feeling, more permanent affective states that endure over years, and temperamentally based predispositions to react to events in certain ways. Kagan argues that we need to distinguish between chronic mood states and temperamental characteristics. Individuals with various temperaments differ in the ease with which they experience different emotions, and the emotions experienced may be qualitatively different. Indeed, Kagan (1998) concluded that variation in temperamental characteristics helps to explain why some children do not experience trauma-related symptoms even in the face of major stressors such as kidnapping or divorce. Rothbart and Bates (1998) proposed a number of possible models of the direct, indirect, and interactive effects of multiple temperamental traits on multiple adjustment indicators. Their explication of such linkages provides an abundance of possible processes that can and should be investigated.

Furthermore, we need to differentiate between temperament and emotion regulation skills (Underwood, 1997). Temperament affects the intensity of emotional experience. As a result, an individual who experiences emotions more intensely faces a greater challenge in emotion regulation. Similarly, individuals with different temperaments experience different levels of arousability. Because of differences in arousability, it is difficult to determine whether an adolescent who is apparently effectively managing an emotionallychallengingsituationissuperioratemotionregulation compared with an adolescent who is having more difficulty, or whether that adolescent is simply less reactive (Kagan, 1994). Future research needs to distinguish purposeful emotion regulation from low arousability.

The concept of emotion regulation highlights the role of temperament in socialization processes (e.g., Contreras et al., 2000). Much attention has been directed at the environmental antecedents of different emotional states, positive and negative. For instance, as reviewed earlier, parenting behaviors influence the development of adaptive emotion regulation, such as self-esteem and psychosocial maturity, as well as dysregulated emotions such as depression. However, adolescent adjustment and maladjustment are affected not only by an interpersonal environment that encourages or discourages certain qualities, but also by a person’s temperamental dispositions (Kagan, 1994). Future research needs to assess how temperament and socialization work together to influence the development of emotion regulation (Underwood, 1997).

Different models for considering both temperament and socialization in adolescent adjustment are emerging. For instance, Calkins (1994) integrated research on the developmental consequences of temperament and parenting styles in her model of the development of social competence in childhood. She examines the relative contributions of internal and external sources of individual differences in emotion regulation. Internal factors include temperamental characteristics such as physiological regulation (e.g., heart rate) and behavioral tendencies (e.g., soothability, reactivity). External factors include parents’ explicit training in emotion regulation skills as well as more global parenting styles (e.g., responsiveness, control). In this model, these internal and external factors independently influence a child’s emotion regulation style, which in turn affects subsequent interpersonal functioning such as relationships with peers (Calkins, 1994).

Other models highlight the transactional, bidirectional relationship between temperament and socialization (Collins et al., 2000; Wills et al., 1995). Reciprocal models of parent and child effects (e.g., Bell & Chapman, 1986) are not new to the study of child development. These models consider not only how parenting practices affect child development but also how children’s behavioral qualities affect the type of parenting they receive. Some of the research in this area has focused specifically on temperament. For instance, children with impulsive and irritable temperaments elicit more negative parenting than do children with less difficult temperaments (Dix, 1991). A longitudinal study found that parental punitive reactions to children’s negative emotions at ages 6 to 8 were linked to increases in these children’s problem behaviors and negative emotions by early adolescence (ages 10 to 12; Eisenberg et al., 1999). Such bidirectional models are rare, but much needed, in the study of emotions and socialization in adolescence.

Another model of how temperament can be integrated into studies of adolescent adjustment is emerging from research demonstrating how temperamental traits affect adolescents’ susceptibility to parenting and other external events (e.g., Colder, Lochman, & Wells, 1997). What might promote positive adjustment for one adolescent, or most adolescents, may be relatively ineffective with other adolescents. In childhood, evidence is accumulating that different children may require and respond to different levels of structure and support based on their temperamental characteristics (e.g., Belsky, Hsieh, & Crnic, 1998). For example, a hyperactive child may respond well to the type of strict limit setting that would stifle the competence of a shy child. Thus, temperament may moderate the association between parenting practices and adolescent adjustment.

Recent work with youth in late childhood and early adolescence examines these models. For instance, Lengua and colleagues (Lengua & Sandler, 1996; Lengua, Wolchik, Sandler, & West, 2000) have examined the role of temperament in early adolescents’ adaptation to parental divorce. In one study the temperamental trait of approach-flexibility (one’s orientation toward change and new situations) moderated relationships between adolescents’ coping styles and their psychological symptoms. In particular, active coping strategies were related to less anxiety for adolescents with flexible temperaments but was unrelated to adjustment for adolescents with less flexible temperaments. Avoidant coping styles were related to greater anxiety and conduct problems for adolescents with less flexible temperaments but were unrelated to adjustment for adolescents with more flexible temperaments. Thus, certain temperamental styles appear to be protective.

In another study of adolescent adjustment to parental divorce, Lengua et al. (2000) found that early adolescents’ temperaments moderated the relationship between parenting practices and their psychological adjustment. Specifically, they found that inconsistent discipline and parental rejection were related to adolescent depression only for adolescents with more difficult temperaments (high on impulsivity and low on positive emotionality). Similarly, inconsistent discipline and parental rejection were related to conduct problems for adolescents low in positive emotionality and high on impulsivity. These parenting styles were unrelated to conduct problems for adolescents with easier temperaments (high on positive emotionality and low on impulsivity).

Finally, in a sample of fourth- and fifth-grade boys, Colder et al. (1997) found that temperament (i.e., fear and activity levels) moderated the relationship between parenting behaviors and children’s adjustment. For example, harsh parenting was related to high levels of aggression only for boys with highly fearful temperaments, and poor parental monitoring was related to higher levels of aggression only for boys with highly active temperaments. In addition, both harsh parenting and overinvolved parenting were related to greater symptoms of depression only for boys with highly fearful temperaments.

Overall, the previous studies illustrate some of the challenges faced by researchers who wish to incorporate adolescent temperament into the study of adolescent adjustment, as well as some of the theoretical models that are being used to study these effects. Future research that continues to integrate temperament will likely lead to important advances in our understanding of how to promote healthy adolescent adjustment.

Person Approaches to Understanding Emotion and Personality

A fourth emerging theme is captured by the increasing number of empirical studies of adolescent emotional and personality development that are based on person (or pattern) approaches (e.g., Caspi, 2000; Salmivalli, 1998; Schulenberg, Wadsworth, O’Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996). The person approach considers individuals in a holistic manner, as organisms consisting of multiple attributes (e.g., cognitive, biological, behavioral) that are integrated into an organized system (Block, 1971; Magnusson & Törestad, 1993). Advocates of the person approach argue that the individual’s pattern or profile across a number of indicators (the total configuration of variables) may carry more meaning for understanding that individual’s development than do single variables (Magnusson & Cairns, 1996). The person is the unit of analysis, and individuals who share similar profiles are grouped together (Stattin & Magnusson, 1996). These groups may then be compared on other relevant variables and developmental trajectories.

The person approach can be contrasted with the traditional variable approach, on which most research on adolescence is based. The variable approach examines interrelations among single variables, assuming that these interrelations justify inferences about how variables function in individuals (Magnusson & Cairns, 1996). Magnusson and Törestad (1993) argued, however, that the variable approach masks qualitative differences among people and is limited with respect to delineating how variables operate together within subgroups of individuals. Indeed, in a longitudinal study following individuals from childhood to early adulthood, Stattin and Magnusson (1996) showed that more variance in adult externalizing behaviors was explained by the constellation of characteristics present in adolescence (i.e., a combination of the adolescent’s involvement in multiple risk behaviors such as truancy and family background risks such as father’s alcoholism) rather than by individual predictor variables.

The person approach can be applied to many phenomena in the study of adolescent emotional and personality development. It may be one way to answer the frequent call for more examination and integration of multiple levels of adolescent development, including the biological, psychological, cognitive, and contextual (e.g., Susman, 1997).

Consider a recent study by Galambos and Tilton-Weaver (2000). These authors were intrigued by speculation in the literature on psychosocial maturity that some adolescents, rather than being psychosocially mature, were actually pseudomature: They maintained the appearance of maturity through behavioral means (e.g., engagement in problem behaviors such as drinking) without showing genuine psychological maturity (e.g., a stable sense of identity, selfreliance, and a strong work ethic; Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986). Galambos and Tilton-Weaver were also intrigued by previous findings showing that adolescents who engaged in higher levels of problem behavior also had older subjective ages (i.e., they felt older than their chronological ages), indicating a possible mismatch between their subjective levels of maturity and their actual behavior (Galambos, Kolaric, Sears, & Maggs, 1999). Following a person approach, Galambos and Tilton-Weaver hypothesized that pseudomaturity could be defined by high levels of problem behavior, an older subjective age, and low levels of psychological maturity—a constellation of behavioral, psychological, and subjective attributes. Indeed, in a sample of Canadian adolescents ranging in age from 10 to 17, 13% emerged as pseudomature (high problem behavior, older subjective age, low psychological maturity). There was also a mature cluster (43% of the sample) who were low on problem behavior, felt slightly older than their chronological ages, and scored high on psychological maturity. The final cluster, immature adolescents, comprised 44% of the sample. They reported low levels of problem behavior, were psychologically immature, and felt relatively young.

The three clusters of adolescents who emerged differed in other ways as well (Galambos & Tilton-Weaver, 2000). Compared to the mature and immature adolescents, the pseudomature adolescents were more advanced with respect to pubertal status, reported a stronger desire to be older and to attain adult privileges, were more socially active, and reported more conflict with mothers (among boys). Compared to mature adolescents, immature adolescents reported a stronger desire to be older, more conflict with mothers, and less acceptance from mothers. The authors concluded that both pseudomature and immature adolescents had a poorer fit with their social environments than did the mature adolescents.

This and similar research speak to the advantages of using person approaches to understand the adolescent as a whole person with multiple, interrelated attributes. Some research questions demand that researchers attempt to integrate biological (including hormonal), cognitive, emotional, psychological, and contextual characteristics in seeking to understand adolescents’ lifelong development. The person approach is an exciting paradigm that will add much to our accumulating knowledge of emotional and personality development in adolescence.

In this research paper we highlighted research on adolescents’ emotional development, describing emotion regulation as a useful framework for viewing and uniting broad areas of research on emotional well-being and distress. Theory on adolescents’ self-systems and their psychosocial maturity were discussed as models that integrate a variety of indicators of adaptive emotion regulation. The general concepts of internalizing and externalizing problems were discussed as indicative of adolescents’ emotional distress and reflective of the experience of emotional dysregulation. Given the significant gender difference in the prevalence of internalizing disorders (with more adolescent girls affected), we reviewed recent research on predictors and correlates of internalizing symptoms.

We also reviewed some recent research on personality and temperament in adolescence, identifying major issues in the structure of personality, the origins of personality, and continuity in personality and temperament across time. Recent research shows that the Big Five model of personality, based on years of research with adult samples, replicates in samples of adolescents. Moreover, links have been established between dimensions of temperament in childhood and later personality traits. The goodness-of-fit model of temperament was reviewed as a way of understanding how temperament may be shaped, viewed, and responded to differently depending on the social context.

Finally, we identified four exciting themes in recent research on emotion and personality development. The first is a focus on adolescents’ optimal development, with a call for better measurement of successful outcomes. The second refers to cultural variations in emotional and personality development, a trend that has burgeoned over the last several years. The third theme involves studies that integrate knowledge of temperament into studies of adolescent adjustment, focusing on the role that temperament may play in emotional expression and regulation. The fourth emerging theme involves increasing interest in conducting studies of adolescents’ emotional and personality development from a person approach, which considers intra-individual constellations of multiple attributes in the search for understanding developmental trajectories.

Knowledge emerging from research on these themes has potentially important implications for the targeting, design, and effectiveness of prevention and intervention programs. The identification of emotion regulation as a salient marker of positive youth development means that school- and community-based programs can be designed to help young people regulate and cope with their emotions. Emotion regulation is a strength that consists of a set of skills and strategies, and this asset can be acquired. Teaching effective emotion regulation fits with the goals of prevention programs designed to promote healthy youth development by increasing youth strengths (e.g., Roth et al., 1998).

But do all children and adolescents need training in effective emotion regulation? The research examined here suggests that successful emotion regulation is more of a challenge for some children and adolescents than for others, for example, those with a set of individual risk factors, such as a temperament characterized by negative emotionality and strong reactivity. Thus, in addition to general school- and community-based programs for adolescents at large, some intervention programs could be designed to target at-risk children and adolescents (e.g., those who have been identified as having anger control problems or being easily distressed). If deficits in emotion regulation are caught and addressed early enough, it is likely that the individual will have a more positive developmental trajectory into adulthood.

Prevention and intervention programs should incorporate the important role of parents in promoting positive youth development. Research on the interaction between parenting and temperament is moving toward a clearer understanding of parenting behaviors that are more or less suited to particular temperaments (i.e., goodness of fit). Given the central role of parenting in promoting positive youth development, a wide range of family strengthening and parent-training programs has been developed (for a review, see Kumpfer, 1999). The goals of these programs are to decrease the risk factors associated with developmental problems and increase protective family factors, including supportive parent-child relations. The promotion of emotion regulation strategies and prevention of emotional dysregulation among parents and adolescents could be included as important components of these programs.

In designing effective interventions and social policies, we need to know more about how families, peers, schools, and cultural contexts moderate the relationships among temperament, emotional regulation, and adolescent adjustment. Attention to diverse cultural contexts is particularly important in this regard. For instance, we need to know more about the contexts that promote the achievement of stable ethnic identities, the stressors that challenge ethnic identity development, and the relationship of ethnic identity to other indicators of well being. In addition, we need to identify ways in which models of healthy youth development apply to culturally diverse adolescents (e.g., universal protective factors) and the ways in which they need to be modified to fit unique experiences (e.g., incorporating the experience of racism).

The four emerging themes that we have identified are just beginning to provide the specific empirical knowledge we need to design effective prevention and intervention efforts. To accomplish this, however, it is essential that social policies support (a) the view that the emotion regulation is an issue of health promotion, (b) funding for basic research in the general area of emotion regulation, (c) funding for research and programming that explicitly addresses similarities and differences in the needs and strengths of adolescents from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and (d) funding for applied research that evaluates the effectiveness of prevention and intervention programs designed to increase effective emotion regulation.

As this research paper has shown, researchers have learned a great deal about adolescents’ emotional and personality development. The field of research on adolescence is a very active and exciting one, with promising new developments that bring us ever closer to obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of the interacting forces that shape adolescent behavior. With a more complete picture, we will be better able to influence adolescents’ lives in ways that will be of benefit to them as they mature into adulthood.

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Adult co-creators’ emotional and psychological experiences of the co-creation process: a Health CASCADE scoping review protocol

• Lauren McCaffrey   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2524-977X 1 ,
• Bryan McCann 1 ,
• Maria Giné-Garriga 2 ,
• Qingfan An 3 ,
• Greet Cardon 4 ,
• Sebastien François Martin Chastin 1 , 4 ,
• Rabab Chrifou 4 ,
• Sonia Lippke 5 ,
• Quentin Loisel 1 ,
• Giuliana Raffaella Longworth 2 ,
• Katrina Messiha 6 ,
• Mira Vogelsang 1 ,
• Emily Whyte 1 &
• Philippa Margaret Dall 1  

Systematic Reviews volume  13 , Article number:  231 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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There is a growing investment in the use of co-creation, reflected by an increase in co-created products, services, and interventions. At the same time, a growing recognition of the significance of co-creators’ experience can be detected but there is a gap in the aggregation of the literature with regard to experience. Therefore, the purpose of this scoping review is to uncover the breadth of existing empirical research on co-creation experience, how it has been defined and assessed, and its key emotional and psychological characteristics in the context of co-created products, services, or interventions among adults.

The development of the search strategy was guided by the research question, Arksey, and O’Malley’s scoping review methodology guidelines, and through collaboration with members of the Health CASCADE consortium. The results of the search and the study inclusion process will be reported in full and presented both narratively and by use of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses extension for scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) flow diagram. Comprehensive searches of relevant electronic databases (e.g. Scopus) will be conducted to identify relevant papers. Snowball searches to identify additional papers through included full-text papers will be done using the artificial intelligence tool, namely, Connected Papers. All review steps will involve at least two reviewers. Studies in English, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, and French, published from the year 1970 onwards, will be considered. Microsoft Excel software will be used to record and chart extracted data.

The resulting scoping review could provide useful insights into adult co-creators’ experience of participating in the co-creation process. An increased understanding of the role of emotional and psychological experiences of participating in co-creation processes may help to inform the co-creation process and lead to potential benefits for the co-creators and co-created outcome.

Systematic review registration

10.5281/zenodo.7665851.

Peer Review reports

Co-creation can be defined as “any act of collective creativity that involves a broad range of relevant and affected actors in creative problem-solving that aims to produce a desired outcome” [ 1 ]. Co-creation is increasingly acknowledged as a promising approach to address complex ‘wicked’ societal problems and develop more contextually relevant interventions to improve outcomes in a variety of settings [ 2 ]. By facilitating communication across sectors, integrating diverse forms of knowledge and expertise, and enabling local ownership, co-creation can be useful in a broad range of fields including, healthcare, community, and education [ 3 ].

The co-creation process is guided by participatory methodologies [ 4 ]. The goal of participatory research is to engage all those who are the subject of the research in all stages of the research [ 5 ]. Participatory research acknowledges the value of their contribution in a practical and collaborative way [ 5 ]. Co-creation builds on these participatory methodologies, to address the power imbalances stemming from social inequities and uses empowerment approaches to address and meet the needs of citizens [ 3 ]. Co-creation is more specific than the broad concept of participation, which also refers to passive involvement [ 6 ]. The ultimate goal of co-creation is to actively involve all relevant and affected stakeholders in all aspects of the co-creation process, such as planning or conducting [ 7 ].

Whilst the co-creation behaviour of participants in a co-creation process is mostly documented in the co-creation literature, the emotional and psychological experience of participating in the co-creation process has been given less attention [ 8 , 9 ]. Co-creation behaviour is argued to comprise multiple behavioural dimensions that fall under two higher-order factors, namely, participation behaviour and citizenship behaviour [ 10 ]. The behavioural dimensions of participation behaviour include information seeking and sharing, responsible behaviour, and personal interaction. The dimensions of citizenship behaviour include feedback, advocacy, helping, and tolerance [ 10 ]. On the other hand, the co-creators’ experiences of participating in the co-creation process, hereby shortened to co-creation experience, capture co-creators’ emotional and psychological states; highlight the interactive component; and involve a continuous process as opposed to a single fixed-time event [ 9 ]. In brief, the co-creation experience, as defined for the purposes of this review, is the co-creators’ emotional and psychological states during active participation and interaction when engaging in the co-creation process [ 9 ]. Co-creation experience differs from co-creation behaviour due to its focus on the feelings and cognitions derived from the act of undertaking the co-creation behaviour [ 9 ].

Research indicates that active involvement in the co-creation process can have profound positive effects on increased health and performance outcomes, satisfaction, and well-being [ 11 , 12 ]. For example, Leask et al. [ 13 ] reported older adults having positive experiences engaging with the co-creation of a health intervention, describing that participants’ role as co-researchers made it enjoyable, interesting, and rewarding. Similar findings from Rooijen et al. [ 14 ] indicated that participants felt empowered, liked the interactive characteristic of meetings, and felt they were valued contributors with a shared responsibility for the project. Positive emotional states like happiness or gratitude can foster trust, which is important for building relationships, whereas negative emotional states, like anger, uncertainty, and frustration, can decrease trust [ 15 ]. Building relationships is an important aspect of the co-creation process, in which experiencing positive emotions helps to create new relationships [ 16 ]. Therefore, positive emotions could also contribute to the functioning of the co-creation group(s) and the successful development of products like intervention components, tools, and further actions.

There are instances when co-creators can experience the co-creation process negatively. There exists some research to indicate how failed co-created services recovered can impact co-creators in terms of future intention to co-create, role clarity, and motivation [ 17 ]. However, there might be a lack of, or a lack of visibility of, literature documenting the negative emotional and psychological experiences associated with the co-creation process because of publication bias. Individual and interpersonal experience including group dynamics are central to the creation of value and innovation and this justifies the need to study the role of human experience in the context of co-creation [ 18 , 19 ]. Figure  1 provides a visual depiction of the proposed connection between co-creation experience and the other elements of co-creation.

Suggested model of the relationship between co-creation experience, processes, behaviour, outcomes, impact, and future co-creation

However, so far, there is a gap regarding the aggregation of the literature pertaining to co-creation experience. Therefore, the purpose of this scoping review is to uncover the breadth of existing empirical research on co-creation experience, how it has been defined, and assessed and its key characteristics in the context of co-created products, services, or interventions among adults. As the focus is on the participant’s experience of the process and not the outcome, no limits have been applied to the co-creation context. Scoping reviews are exploratory in nature and systematically map available literature on a broad topic to identify key concepts, theories, sources of evidence, and research gaps [ 20 ]. A scoping review has been identified as an appropriate means to address this broad research question given that, to the authors’ knowledge, there has been no systematic review of co-creation experience literature, the phenomenon is not well understood or utilised, and studies span a wide variety of fields. The aim of the current scoping review is to deliver an evidence-based review of co-creators’ experiences of co-creating. This review will guide future research to advance evidence-based co-creation methods and inform guidance aimed at enhancing positive experiences for those participating in co-creation.

Research question

What is the current state of the science regarding adult co-creators’ emotional and psychological experiences of participating in co-creation?

The objectives of this review are to:

Determine the extent of research on co-creation experience.

Uncover the range of and key characteristics of emotional and psychological experiences documented in the literature to date.

Identify any explicit or implicit underlying psychological theories drawn upon to explain the potential mechanism of the experience of co-creation.

Document any tools or technology used during the co-creation process that impacted the experience during co-creation or to make co-creation more successful .

Methodology

This scoping review protocol is reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocols (PRISMA-P) checklist (see Additional file 1).

Search strategy

The search strategy comprises three main stages (see Fig.  2 ). The first stage involved searching the newly created Health CASCADE Co-creation Database. This database was created by members of the Health CASCADE network and was aimed at collecting in one place the entire corpus of literature pertaining to participatory research and co-creation (1). This database was created using CINAHL, PubMed and all databases accessible via ProQuest through Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) institutional licence (17 databases in total, APA PsycArticles®, APA PsycInfo®, Art, Design & Architecture Collection, British Periodicals, Coronavirus Research Database, Early Modern Books, Ebook Central, Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive, Humanities Index, Periodicals Archive Online, ProQuest One AcademicTrial-Limited time only, PTSDpubs, SciTech Premium Collection, Social Science Premium Collection, Sports Medicine & Education Index, The Vogue Archive, and The Women's Wear Daily Archive). The key search terms used in this search strategy are found in Table  1 . ASReview, an artificial intelligence (AI) aided platform that helps find relevant records was used for screening the records to be included in this database. The AI performs a textual analysis of the provided records, based on active learning and prioritization. Given the large volume of records retrieved from PubMed, CINAHL, and all databases available through ProQuest with GCU access, AI was necessary to speed up the screening process. There are over 13,000 records contained in this database, with all titles and abstracts containing at least one of the search terms.

Stages of search strategy

The Health CASCADE Co-creation Database was searched using free-text terms relating to co-creation experience (see Table  2 ). Search terms have been developed in reference to the research question and through consultation with members of the Health CASCADE consortium. The search will be piloted to check the appropriateness of keywords and to ensure known studies are identified.

The second stage of the search strategy is to use both sets of search terms (see Tables  1 and 2 ) in Scopus using the Boolean operator AND to combine the two sets. This is to provide additional robustness to the search. Due to the large volume of records retrieved (> 35,000) when combining the two sets of search terms, it is necessary to omit some search terms used to create the Health CASCADE Co-creation Database. Four search terms will be retained “co-creat*”, “co-production”, “co-design” and “experience-based design”. These search terms are specifically chosen because co-production and co-design are commonly used interchangeably with the term co-creation [ 21 ]. In addition, “experience-based design” is retained due to the obvious focus on the experience. We will include articles that meet our inclusion criteria for co-creation, regardless of the terminology used to describe the methodology. For pragmatic reasons, sources of unpublished empirical studies (including grey literature, theses, and dissertations) will not be searched for. The draft search strategy for Scopus is available in Additional file 2.

The final stage of the search is to employ snowballing to capture any additional articles that may be potentially missed. An artificial intelligence tool called Connected Papers [ 22 ] will be used to identify papers that (1) the included paper has cited (backward reference searching), and (2) papers that have since cited the included paper (forward reference searching).

The article selection process is considered an iterative process, whereby the search strategy will be initially broad and then refined based on abstracts retrieved and as reviewer familiarity with the literature increases. The concept of co-creation is defined differently depending on the setting and context and is often used interchangeably with similar, yet distinct concepts, but equally lacking a clear universal understanding [ 21 ]. Therefore, to account for the overlaps in terminology a broad scope will be initially implemented.

As recommended by Arksey and O’Malley [ 23 ], decisions on how to set search parameters will be made after a general scope of the field has been gained. Hence, this stage will require the reviewer(s) to engage in a reflexive way and repeat steps to ensure a comprehensive literature search with more sensitive searches [ 23 , 24 ].

Inclusion/exclusion criteria

All study participants in the included papers must be adults, described as people aged 18 years and over with no upper limit. Children/adolescents are not included in this study as research indicates that there are differences between their emotional experiences in terms of emotional intensity and stability [ 25 ].

Empirical articles (i.e. primary research studies) include any qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research designs that include a description of the co-created product, service, or intervention and an evaluation of the co-creators’ co-creation experience. Although scoping reviews can draw on evidence from non-empirical sources, this review imposes limits to include empirical sources only as empirical sources would be most useful and appropriate for contributing to an evidence-based understanding of co-creation methods.

Any context that involves the co-creation of a product, service, or intervention will be considered.

The Health CASCADE Co-creation Database is limited to searching records between 1st January 1970 and 1st December 2021. The search in Scopus will include records from 1st January 1970 until the date of the search.

The Health CASCADE Co-creation Database is limited to only include materials that are written in English. However, for the search conducted in Scopus, publications in English, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Chinese languages will also be considered, as the research team has proficient fluency in these languages.

Data extraction

Following the database search, articles will be exported as a CSV file for removal of duplicates in Excel. The articles will be imported and screened in Rayyan. The title and abstract of all studies will be screened independently by several reviewers (LMcC, QA, QL, EW, GRL, RC, and MV) and irrelevant studies will be removed. All titles and abstracts will be double-screened. Full-text articles of studies identified as potentially relevant for inclusion will subsequently be sought and screened by several reviewers (LMcC, QA, QL, EW, GRL, RC, MV, and KM) against the agreed set of criteria. Differences of opinion regarding inclusion or exclusion will be resolved by discussion and reaching a consensus or by a third reviewer. The results of the search and the study inclusion process will be reported in full in the final scoping review and presented both narratively and by use of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses extension for scoping review (PRISMA-ScR) flow diagram.

To determine the extent of research on co-creation experience (objective 1), details about co-creation more generally will first be extracted. This includes:

Study’s definition of co-creation and co-creation experience (if available).

The context or setting.

Data about the participants (number, type, and characteristics of co-creators’ involved).

Description of the co-creation process undertaken (including number of sessions, level of participation).

Purpose of co-creation.

Outcome of the co-created intervention, service, or product.

The key characteristics of psychological and emotional experience including positive and negative components (objective 2) will be extracted.

The psychological theory underpinning the co-creation experience identified by the authors of the studies (objective 3) will be recorded.

Information about the technology or tools that had an impact on the co-creation experience (objective 4) will be extracted.

Additional descriptive information such as discipline and date of publication will also be extracted.

The above-extracted information will be entered into an Excel spreadsheet developed by the authors. This data extraction Excel spreadsheet may be modified and revised as necessary during the process of extracting data from the included evidence sources to ensure that key findings relevant to the review question are addressed.

Quality assessment

There exists debate as to whether a scoping review should contain an assessment of study quality [ 26 ]. A quality assessment component will be included in this review in relation to the sufficiency of reporting the process of co-creating an intervention, service, or product. This tool (see Table  3 ) has been adapted from Leask et al.’s [ 4 ] ‘checklist for reporting intervention co-creation’ and Eyles et al.’s [ 27 ] amended version of a checklist for reporting non-pharmacological interventions. The reason for including this checklist is two-fold. Firstly, the scoping review may contain a variety of study designs and the focus is not solely on the outcomes, but rather on the process [ 27 ]. Secondly, as explained above, the concept of co-creation is used interchangeably with other similar overlapping concepts, such that some processes may be described as co-creation when they are in fact not (according to the definition used in this review) or vice versa. Therefore, by incorporating this checklist, it will become clearer as to the type or extent of co-creation processes that were implemented and whether they were clearly reported within each individual source of empirical evidence. However, given that a scoping review aims to present an overview of the extant literature on a particular topic without synthesis from individual studies, no study will be excluded on the basis of the quality of reporting co-created interventions.

Strategy for data analysis

The PRISMA-ScR will be used to guide the reporting of the scoping review [ 28 ]. Whilst, the synthesis of the results from included sources of evidence is more appropriately done with a systematic review, the analysis of data in scoping reviews is generally descriptive in nature [ 29 ]. A narrative summary of extracted data will be produced along with the tabulated and/or charted results described in relation to the review question and objectives. Descriptive techniques, such as basic coding of data to particular categories, are recommended as a useful approach when the purpose is to identify concepts or key characteristics related to the concept [ 20 ]. Data will be analysed using the well-established method of thematic analysis [ 30 ]. This method is characterised by identifying and reporting recurring themes within the data and is a suitable analytic method because it allows for patterns of experience to be recorded, such as understanding adults’ experiences of participating in co-creation. We intend to extract relevant co-creation experience data from the result sections of articles, including verbatim participant quotations. For quantitative data, such as questionnaires, we will attempt to extract the item statements and code them alongside the qualitative data.

The purpose of this scoping review is to uncover the breadth of existing empirical research on co-creation experience with a focus on emotional aspects and from a psychological perspective. An increased understanding of the role of experiences of participating in co-creation processes may help to inform the development and use of co-creation processes and lead to potential benefits for the co-creators’ and co-created outcome.

This scoping review has some limitations, which reflect the balance between conducting a wide search to discover the breadth of existing literature and the pragmatic constraints of conducting the review. This scoping review searches for published peer-reviewed work from SCOPUS and the Health CASCADE Co-creation Database. Other databases could be searched but for pragmatic reasons, these two databases were selected for their breadth and relevancy. Another limitation is that it was necessary to restrict the search terms for capturing ‘co-creation’ for the search in Scopus to maintain a manageable number of records retrieved to screen by the research team. However, authors may use different terms or descriptions. For instance, variations of terms like co-creation, co-design, and co-production, whether written with a dash or space can affect the number of articles retrieved. Boundaries on the search terms relating to experience were also formed, for example, specific emotions were not included in the search string, due to the large range of possible emotions that can be experienced, which would make the search unwieldy. We also have not used any of the advanced search features of the databases, such as proximity searching, which could potentially improve the specificity.

A strength of this review is the comprehensive snowballing search strategy to capture additional relevant papers. The results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and to scientific conferences. The plan for dissemination includes digital science communication platforms and presentations.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Artificial intelligence

Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols

Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis–extension for scoping reviews

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Acknowledgements

The Health CASCADE consortium.

The PhD studies of Lauren McCaffrey are funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n° 956501.

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Lauren McCaffrey, Bryan McCann, Sebastien François Martin Chastin, Quentin Loisel, Mira Vogelsang, Emily Whyte & Philippa Margaret Dall

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Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

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Greet Cardon, Sebastien François Martin Chastin & Rabab Chrifou

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LMcC coordinated and conceived the study. LMcC, PMD, BMcC, and MGG have made substantive contributions to developing this protocol and the review question. LMcC, PMD, BMcC, MGG, QA, QL, EW, GRL, MV, RC, and KM jointly developed the search strategy. LMcC drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lauren McCaffrey .

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Additional file 1: prisma-p 2015 checklist., additional file 2: search strategy–scopus., rights and permissions.

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McCaffrey, L., McCann, B., Giné-Garriga, M. et al. Adult co-creators’ emotional and psychological experiences of the co-creation process: a Health CASCADE scoping review protocol. Syst Rev 13 , 231 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-024-02643-9

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Received : 10 August 2022

Accepted : 22 August 2024

Published : 11 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-024-02643-9

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