Adults' Descriptions of a Situation Can Influence Children's Appraisal, Feelings, and Subsequent Psychological Functions.

ABSTRACT

This study examined how an adult's descriptions of a situation could influence children's appraisal, feelings, and subsequent psychological functions. After baseline measures, 81 middle-class Singaporean kindergarten children (Mage  = 5.6 years, SD = 0.6) were exposed to an ambiguous accident and provided with positive, negative, or no descriptions of the accident. Children's appraisal of the experience, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game were measured. The results revealed that the descriptions of the accident influenced children's appraisal, feelings of pleasantness, motivation to play a new game, confidence in playing the new game well, and performance on the new game.