The aim of this study was to analyze the communication of emotions in pre-school children, focusing on the development of competence in regulating emotional expression in an interactive context. The work developed through the discovery of temporal patterns, in accordance with the assumption that human behavior is a system characterized by sequential structures that cannot be identified by simple observation and are not detected by standard statistical analysis.

On a theoretical level, the study was influenced by dynamic systems theory [1], which focuses on the dynamic nature of behavior, and by situationist social psychology, founded by Kourt Lewin. According to the latter, behavior can be accurately explained and predicted as part of a situation embedded in a dynamic tension system [2]. Any behavior, including facial expression, should be explained in terms of the situation in which it is observed. Empirical support for the tension-system approach to facial expression comes from various sources, including studies of the development and regulation of the non-verbal expression of emotion [3,4,5,6,7].

Our general objective was to collate the results emerging from previous studies of non-verbal expression and communication of emotions among pre-school infants [3,8,9] by using an analytical method that allows the temporal dimension of behavior to be calculated. The Theme software enabled us to record and describe the temporal and sequential structure of a set of data by operating T-pattern detection in a process analysis [10]. The analysis was conducted using filmed sequences of the behavior of children (aged 3-5 years) observed in a laboratory situation under two different experimental conditions:

• success in a game against the experimenter (stranger)
• failure in a game against the experimenter (stranger)

The analysis was conducted over an interval of 30-120 s, during which time the children communicated their emotions to the experimenter. These were mapped onto a behavior grid according to FACS [11].

Our results show that there is a large number of temporal patterns under both sets of conditions. The number and frequency of these patterns demonstrate that emotional communication is highly synchronized: some patterns are repeated cyclically during the communication process. The age of the subjects and the hedonic connotation of the context emerge as significant factors in data variation: children regulate their behavior according to social context features.

The careful, empirical description of non-verbal behavior in emotional communication reveals a remarkable variety of behavioral units, variously combined to produce patterns. This finding suggests that true 'expressions' of emotion are the output of complex tension systems, according to the Lewinian standpoint. During periods of emotion, actual behavior is a complex and rapid succession of both gestures and facial, head and eye movements.

References

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10. Magnusson, M.S. (2000). Discovering hidden time patterns in behaviour: T-patterns and their detection. Behaviour Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 32(1), 93-110.
11. Ekman, P.; Friesen, W.V. (1978). Investigator's guide to Facial Action Coding System. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2002 , 4^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 27-30 August 2002, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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