Characteristics of Emotion Recognition Ability among Primary School Children: Relationships with Peer Status and Friendship Quality

The present study explored the characteristics of children’s emotion recognition ability, as well as its relationships with peer status and friendship quality. Participants were 308 Chinese primary school children in Grades 2 to 6 (54% boys; Mage = 9.99 years, SD = 1.49). Emotion recognition ability was measured by responses to multimodal videos covering eight emotions. Peer status and friendship quality were measured by peer nomination and questionnaire, respectively. Results indicated that: 1) Emotion recognition ability showed an overall upward trend as children age, with girls performing better than boys; 2) There were significant differences on the accuracy scores between emotion categories (ranked from high to low as: anger, sadness, joy, amusement, fear, irritation, pleasure, and interest), as well as a significant interaction between emotion category and grade; 3) Emotion recognition ability was positively related with both peer status and friendship quality, demonstrating its ties to children’s interpersonal interactions. These results not only broaden understanding about the development of emotion recognition ability, but also evidence its importance as a sensitive indicator of children’s social relationships.