Preschool understanding of emotions: contributions to classroom anger and aggression

Background: We sought to identify patterns of social cognitive differences among preschoolers that were related to risk of stable aggressive behavior with peers. Following Lemerise and Arsenio (2000), we considered the emotional components of early social cognition, reasoning that young children's substrate of emotion knowledge serves them in decoding social encounters. Method: One hundred and twenty‐seven children from a longitudinal study from age 3 to 4 though to their kindergarten year were interviewed on their emotional knowledge initially using a puppet procedure and later with stories about mixed emotions and display rule. Each year their anger and antisocial responses to others’ emotions were observed. Teachers also provided information on each child's anger and aggression. Results: Children's deficits in emotion knowledge assessed at age 3 and 4 predicted subsequent years’ aggression. This effect was especially pronounced for boys. Conclusions: The pattern of findings suggests that the processes implicated in Dodge's work with older children may begin earlier than previously thought, with a focus on emotions.