On the Investigation of Narratives About Emotion in Young Children: A Report of Two Studies

In November 1990 we presented to the London Regional Meeting of the World Association of Infant Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines a report of some work on children's emotional development which we have undertaken at the Anna Freud Centre. The work represents a relatively new venture in that its more empirical approach draws on methodology from developmental psychology. The Anna Freud Centre's move in this direction was facilitated by a visit in March 1989 by representatives of the MacArthur Foundation's research group on Early Childhood Transitions. The group's specific interest is emotional development as reflected in the structure of narrative accounts provided by children in response to prompts consisting of imaginary circumstances which call for elaboration, i.e. ‘story stems’.

The Anna Freud Centre has a strong interest in knowing more about children's understanding and mental representations of their own feelings and those of others. It is important to study these processes both in terms of how they change in the course of normal development, and how they appear and may be seen to change when development is pathological. Our own theoretical understanding which informs our clinical work may be enhanced by links with developmental psychologists studying children's emotional development in non-clinical contexts, and whose theoretical viewpoints are different from our own.

Of specific interest are those developmental researchers studying children's use, understanding and verbalization of affect-related words (e.g. ; Harris, 1989). Drawing on their observational techniques, we not only undertook to study the methodologies employed by developmental psychologists but also were inspired to develop our own methods, consonant with the resources available at the Anna Freud Centre. In particular, the Centre's on-site Nursery School offered a unique opportunity for such work.