Toddlers' emotion vocalizations during peer conflicts and contingent teacher interventions in early care and education settings

Abstract

This study used naturalistic audio–visual recordings from early care and education (ECE) settings to examine the associations between toddlers' (76 toddlers, 40 female, Mage = 32.94 months, SD = 4.92 months) multimodal emotion expressions and emotion‐related vocalizations with contingent teacher interventions. Findings indicated a correspondence between multimodal emotion expressions and emotion‐related vocalizations, such that screams and yells corresponded with anger expressions, and cries corresponded with sadness expressions. Time series analysis indicated that toddlers' emotion vocalizations significantly predicted subsequent contingent teacher interventions. Specifically, toddlers' multimodal sadness expressions with vocalizations increased the likelihood of evoking a contingent teacher response seven times more than other emotions and vocalizations. Implications for multimodal emotion correspondences, emotion dynamics, and toddlers' distress expressions are discussed.