NCJ Number
170902
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 21 Issue: 12 Dated: (December 1997) Pages: 1217-1220
Date Published
1997
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Despite the claims made by Aldridge and Wood, recent research shows that children, including preschool children, have the ability to understand and talk about their own emotions and those of other people.
Abstract
Based on their interview study, Aldridge and Wood (1997) arrived at two practical conclusions. First, they advise that questions that tap emotions may well be unproductive with children under the age of, at least, 8 years. Second, they warn that professionals may wrongly promote the impression that the child is not linguistically competent to give evidence. These two conclusions are apparently contradictory. On the strength of their own study, Aldridge and Wood conclude that young children are not linguistically competent; yet, they warn professionals about wrongly presenting the child as incompetent. More recent research challenges the conclusions of Aldridge and Wood. It has shown that direct observation of young children confirms and amplifies the conclusions reached on the basis of parental report. In the 1960s, the language development of various children was studied approximately 1 hour every 2 weeks between the ages of 2 and 5 years. These utterances have been transcribed and are available for computer-aided analysis (MacWhinney and Snow, 1985). Scrutiny of these spontaneous utterances shows that preschool children readily talk about feelings of pain or hurt, as well as basic emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, and anger (Wellman, Harris, Banerjee, and Sinclair, 1995). On the strength of these data, it can be asserted that young children have the vocabulary to report feelings of distress or anger even if they sometimes fail to make use of that vocabulary in particular contexts. By implication, when they respond inappropriately or with silence during an interview about a painful or distressing situation, it is unlikely that linguistic difficulties play a causal role. For Aldridge's and Wood's report, see NCJ-170903. 10 references