Abstract
Children with less knowledge of emotions, more fearful behaviors, and more negative narratives during storytelling have more internalizing behaviors. However, further research is essential to clarify the complex interplay among these affective factors of early development. This includes pinpointing the contexts in which children’s fearfulness is enacted and exploring specific types of emotion knowledge deficits that might be at play. A sample of 74 preschoolers participated in this study on emotion and internalizing behaviors. The study introduced a novel measure of children’s fear expressed during non-fearful contexts (context-incongruent fear), and an unexplored assessment of sad and fearful narratives to a picture book. To clarify the contribution of children’s processing of emotional contexts, knowledge of negative emotional situations was also assessed. Parents and teachers reported on children’s internalizing behavior. Hypotheses predicted context-incongruent fear would be associated with less knowledge of negative emotions, more fearful and sad narratives, and greater internalizing behaviors. Hypotheses also predicted that less knowledge of negative emotion and more fearful and sad narratives would be associated with internalizing behaviors. It was also expected that context-incongruent fear would moderate the association between emotion knowledge and internalizing behavior, such that context-incongruent fear would strengthen the association. Likewise, I expected that context-incongruent fear would moderate the association between sad and fearful narratives and internalizing behavior, but context-incongruent fear would strengthen. the association. Finally, a model that incorporated all study factors proposed that the association between emotion knowledge and internalizing behavior would be mediated by fearful and sad narratives, but that this mediation would be more likely in children who showed higher levels of context-incongruent fear. As expected, children’s context-incongruent fear and understanding of negative emotion contexts were predictive of internalizing behavior. Additionally, although children who made fearful and sad narratives to the picture-book had greater internalizing behaviors, this was more likely for children who had greater knowledge of negative emotional situations. These findings suggest understanding of negative situations may transpire into negative expressions in everyday situations that promote internalizing behaviors. Additionally, they highlight the interplay between children’s understanding of emotional context and the narratives they project onto them with relevance to their emotional well-being.