Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of emotion decoding skills and their relationship to social adjustment. 271 4th and 5th grade children and 256 7th-8th grade children were presented with still photographs of faces with varying emotions and were asked to make pleasant-unpleasant rating and idetify appropriate emotion for each of the pictures. In addition data were collected on their social adjustment using peer nomination measures and self-reported social anxiety scale. The results indicated that 7-8th graders, compared to 4-5th graders, were more likely to make responses consistent with high frequency responses of college students, suggesting emotion decoding skills continue to develop beyond elementary school years. Among the group of 4-5th graders, emotion decoding skills were positively related to peer-rated social adjustment, while in the group of 7-8th graders, the correlations did not reach statistical significance. Self reported social anxiety and self perceived social acceptance were not correlated with emotion decoding skills. The results were discussed in terms of implications for preventive intervention for children and adolescents with poor emotion decoding skills.