Abstract
Using a mental imagery procedure, positive or negative emotions were experimentally induced in 5- and 10-year-old children. In the case of the younger children, the induced emotions influenced their performance on a subsequent memory task, i.e. happy children did better than sad ones. Ten-year-olds, however, seemed to perform at an optimal level in both emotional circumstances. It was argued that these older children, with the help of their firmly established general knowledge about the possible effects of emotion on performance, spontaneously countered the effects of the emotion induction procedure. Activation of the young children’s latent knowledge of these effects, simply by questioning them on this point beforehand, produced, even in their case, an optimal performance in both the happy and sad conditions.
Résumé
Des états émotifs à valence positive ou négative sont expérimentalement provoqués chez des enfants de 5 et 10 ans, à l’aide d’une procédure d’imagerie mentale. Dans l’échantillon des plus jeunes enfants on observe un effet de l’état émotif induit sur la performance à une tâche de mémoire: les enfants «heureux» réussissent mieux que les enfants «tristes». Les enfants de 10 ans sont capables de résultats optimaux quel que soit l’état induit. On suppose que chez ces enfants plus âgés, la connaissance des effets possibles de l’émotion sur la performance a provoqué une compensation spontanée de ces effets dans l’expérience. Une activation des mêmes connaissances latentes chez les enfants de 5 ans, par un simple questionnement préalable sur ce point, provoque une réussite optimale dans les deux conditions.
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Meerum Terwogt, M. Affective states and task performance in naive and prompted children. Eur J Psychol Educ 1, 31–40 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03177409
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03177409