Critical Thinking Questions

  1. How might differences in children’s intelligence contribute to (a) the emotions they display and (b) their understanding of emotions? What other factors might contribute to children’s understanding of their own and others’ emotions?
  2. List at least five aspects of children’s temperament. What aspects of adults’ personality might each predict?
  3. Suppose that you wanted to assess changes with age in children’s regulation of emotion. Think of five different tasks you could use to assess age-related changes. Which would be best to use in early childhood and which would better reflect changes at older ages?
  4. Recall from Chapter 7 the development of children’s theory of mind. How might advances in children’s understanding of theory of mind relate to their understanding of emotion? What aspects of understanding emotion might be mostly associated with an understanding of theory of mind?