Emotion understanding in Quechua Children

Research on children?s understanding of emotion has rarely focused on children from non-industrialized countries whose understanding may follow a different developmental sequence than children from industrialized countries. Quechua children from an agro-pastoralist village were given an adapted version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to assess their understanding of 9 emotion components. Older children performed better on the entire TEC than younger children. Eight- to 11-year-olds were more accurate in identifying emotions connected to individual desires and to a moral misdemeanor than were 4- to 7-year-olds. In addition, there was a trend for 8- to 11-year-olds to understand external causes of emotions better than 4- to 7-year-olds. Compared to British children, the Quechua children were less accurate overall, but the developmental sequence of success on the components was similar despite the radical difference in cultural context. In contrast to children from industrialized settings, children from this Quechua village have little access to formal education. Moreover, Quechua children have fewer opportunities to engage in discussions about emotions with adults, which may also contribute to how well they performed on the TEC. Suggestions for improving the TEC and including a more naturalistic testing situation are included. The results of this empirical research have been published (Tenenbaum, Visscher, Pons & Harris, 2004). This empirical research ended in 2004. With Harriet Tenenbaum (City University of New York), Paloma Visscher and Paul Harris (Harvard University).