Emotional development through the lens of affective social competence

• Published in: Current opinion in psychology 2017-10, Vol.17, p.113-117
• Main Authors: Camras, Linda A, Halberstadt, Amy G
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2352-250X; 2352-250X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.003

•Affective social competence (ASC) is a key concern for developmental psychologists.•Three main areas of ASC are: (a) emotional experience, (b) communication, (c) understanding.•Advances in research related to these areas are described.•Intervention programs designed to optimize children's ASC are presented. Emotion competence, particularly as manifested within social interaction (i.e., affective social competence) is an important contributor to children's optimal social and psychological functioning. In this article we highlight advances in understanding three processes involved in affective social competence: first, experiencing emotions, second, effectively communicating one's emotions, and third, understanding others’ emotions. Experiencing emotion is increasingly understood to include becoming aware of, accepting, and managing one's emotions. Effective communication of emotion involves multimodal signaling rather than reliance on a single modality such as facial expressions. Emotion understanding includes both recognizing others’ emotion signals and inferring probable causes and consequences of their emotions. Parents play an important role in modeling and teaching children all three of these skills, and interventions are available to aid in their development.