Child Development, January/February 2009, Volume 80, Number 1, Pages 115 – 133

Young Children’s Reasoning About the Effects of Emotional and

Physiological States on Academic Performance

Jennifer AmsterlawUniversity of Washington

Kristin Hansen LagattutaUniversity of California –Davis

Andrew N. MeltzoffUniversity of Washington

This study assessed young children’s understanding of the effects of emotional and physiological states oncognitive performance. Five, 6-, 7-year-olds, and adults (N 5 96) predicted and explained how childrenexperiencing a variety of physiological and emotional states would perform on academic tasks. Scenariosincluded: (a) negative and positive emotions, (b) negative and positive physiological states, and (c) controlconditions. All age groups understood the impairing effects of negative emotions and physiological states. Only7-year-olds, however, showed adult-like reasoning about the potential enhancing effects of positive internal statesand routinely cited cognitive mechanisms to explain how internal states affect performance. These results shedlight on theory-of-mind development and also have significance for children’s everyday school success.

High-stakes standardized tests are becoming thenorm in the American educational system, even inelementary school (e.g., Goertz & Duffy, 2003). Inpreparation for these tests, teachers and parents oftenadvise children to make sure they ‘‘get a lot of rest’’and ‘‘eat a good breakfast’’ to optimize their perfor-mance on test day. Such everyday advice is backed byscientific research. Adults and children who getadequate rest score higher on tests measuring atten-tion, memory, executive control, and concentrationthan those who have had poor sleep (Alapin et al.,2000; Randazzo, Muehlbach, Schweitzer, & Walsh,1998). Moreover,1 studies show that hunger and nutri-tional deprivation can significantly impair cognitiveperformance (Alaimo, Olson, & Frongillo, 2001;Murphy et al., 1998).

Physiological conditions are not the only type ofinternal state that affects cognitive performance. Inrecent years, there has been increasing empiricalattention to the influence of people’s emotions and

moods on their ability to attend, think, learn, remem-ber, and problem solve (Clore, Schwarz, & Conway,1994; Damasio, 2003; Dolan, 2002; Isen, 1999). ‘‘Don’tworry, be happy’’ is not a commonly heard test-takingtip, but it may be excellent advice. Studies 2show thatadults induced into negative emotional states per-form significantly worse on tasks measuring creativ-ity, flexible thinking, problem solving, and memorythan those induced into positive emotional states(Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999; Davis, Kirby, & Curtis,2007; Fredrickson, 2001; Isen, 1999; Saavendra &Earley, 1991, but see Bless & Fiedler, 1995; George &Zhou, 2002). Comparable effects on motivation andtask performance have also been observed in childrenaged 3 – 16 years (Bartlett, Burleson, & Santrock, 1982;Greene & Noice, 1988; Hom & Arbuckle, 1988; Rader& Hughes, 2005).

In the current research, we examine 5- to 7-year-oldchildren’s reasoning about the effects of emotionaland physiological states on cognition. Specifically, weevaluate the extent to which young children believethat certain positive and negative internal states havethe potential to impair or to enhance students’ aca-demic performance. Given evidence that internalstates do exert such effects, children’s understandingof these phenomena is an important aspect oftheir metacognitive development. Knowledge of thefactors—both inside oneself and in the external

This work was supported by a National Science Foundation(NSF) grant (SBE-0354453), as part of the Science of LearningCenters program, and by the Tamaki Foundation. Any opinions,findings, and conclusions expressed in the article are those of theauthors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.We would like to thank our research participants and the school

and research staff who contributed to this study. We also thankErika J. Ruberry for her assistance with the project.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Jennifer Amsterlaw, Department of Psychology, Institute forLearning & Brain Sciences, Box 357988, University of Washington,Seattle, WA 98195. Electronic mail may be sent to amsterj@u.washington.edu.

# 2009, Copyright the Author(s)

JournalCompilation# 2009, Society for Research inChildDevelopment, Inc.

All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2009/8001-0011

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C D E V 1 2 4 9

Journal Name Manuscript No. BDispatch: 5.12.08 Journal: CDEV CE: Shanthi

Author Received: No. of pages: 19 ME: Senthil

environment—that can affect one’s cognitive func-tioning lays the groundwork for self-regulated cog-nition, crucial for success in school and in theworkplace (see Schutz & Davis, 2000; Wolters, 2003;Zimmerman, 1990). For example, if one is unawarethat studying in a noisy room interfereswith learning,one may not take steps to ensure that the room isquiet. If onedoes not know that negative emotions canimpair task performance, onemay notwork to controlone’s mood during a high-stakes test or may mis-identify the cause of a poor outcome after the fact.Thus, children’s emerging theories of mind haveconsequences for their learning when they enterschool (Astington & Pelletier, 1996; Lalonde &Chandler, 1995; Wellman & Lagattuta, 2004). Wetarget 5- to 7-year-olds for this study because childrenrapidly acquire knowledge about thinking andthought-emotion connections during this period.

Between 3 and 8 years of age, children develop anunderstanding of the mental processes involved inattention, thinking, and problem solving (Amsterlaw,2006; Flavell, Green,& Flavell, 1995a; Kuhn, 2000). Forexample, 6- and 8-year-olds know better than 4-year-olds that attention is limited in the sense that a personcannot fully attend to two or more things at the sametime: If one is busy trying to identify a person in a classphoto, one is not also simultaneously attending to thepicture frame (Flavell et al., 1995a, 1995b; Pillow,1989). Even young preschoolers recognize factors thatcan affect a person’s ability to listen and concentrate.Miller and Zalenski (1982) found that most 4-year-olds reported that a person (doll) could listen to his orher mother better if noisy objects were removed fromthe room or if he or she went into a quiet room. Theywere also aware that motivation plays a role: Peoplelisten better when they want to listen (see also Miller& Shannon, 1984). Thus, by at least 5 – 6 years of age,children understand that attention and cognitiveperformance are affected by both internal (interestand effort) and external factors (environmental noise).

During the preschool and early elementary years,children also develop insight that thoughts andemotions meaningfully connect. By the age of 4 – 5years, children know that people’s feelings can beinfluenced by their beliefs as well as their desires(Hadwin & Perner, 1991; Harris, Johnson, Hutton,Andrews, & Cooke, 1989; Rieffe, Terwogt, & Cowan,2005; Wellman & Banerjee, 1991). Between 3 and 7years of age, children also grasp that the focus ofa person’s thoughts can cause or change emotions: Aperson can start to feel sad if he or she suddenlyremembers an upsetting event (e.g., Flavell & Flavell,2004; Lagattuta,Wellman,&Flavell, 1997; Lagattuta&Wellman, 2001; Pons&Harris, 2005). They can start to

feel worried just by thinking about a negative eventthat might happen in the future (Lagattuta, 2007).Research on children’s coping strategies further sug-gests that between 5 and 10 years of age, childrenincreasingly understand that people can use theirminds to control their emotions—even in the absenceof a change in the external situation—by usingstrategies such as cognitive reframing or distraction(Altshuler & Ruble, 1989; Band & Weisz, 1988;Lagattuta et al., 1997).

Despite this strong base of research on children’sunderstanding of how thoughts influence emotions,we know little about children’s reasoning about theopposite relationship: How emotions, or other kindsof internal states, can impact people’s ability toattend, learn, and perform. One exception is a studybyBennett andGalpert (1992)who examined 5- and 8-year-old children’s predictions about whether a storyprotagonist would performworse, the same, or betteron a math test if he or she was feeling sad. Resultsshowed that roughly 50%of 5- and 8-year-olds judgedthat negative emotions would impair performance.Although this study provides an important initialstep, several questions remain. Because reasoningabout positive emotions was not assessed, it isunknown whether children believe that positiveemotions impair, enhance, or have no influence onthinking. Moreover, it is not known how children’sreasoning about the impact of negative and positiveemotions on thinking compares to their reasoningabout other internal states and external factorsthat can affect attention, thinking, and problemsolving including noise level, motivation, sleep, andnutrition.

To provide a comprehensive examination of devel-opmental changes in children’s knowledge about theeffects of internal states on school performance, weasked 5- to 7-year-old children, as well as adults, topredict and explain how people in a variety ofphysiological and emotional states would performon challenging cognitive tasks, such asmath, reading,and spelling tests. Scenarios included: (a) two typesof negative emotions (sad and angry), (b) two typesof positive emotions (happy and proud), (c) twotypes of negative physiological conditions (hungryand tired), and (d) two types of positive physiologicalconditions (satiated and wide awake). As controlconditions, we further assessed children’s judgmentsabout external factors that were likely (noisy vs. quietroom) and unlikely (change in rug, clothes, andhairstyle) to affect thinking performance, as well asa no-change control.

If children recognize that relevant changes ininternal states or external conditions have implications

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for a person’s cognitive functioning, then theyshould predict enhancement of performance forpositive internal state (and quiet room) cases,impairment of performance for negative internal state(andnoisy room) cases, andno change inperformancefor control conditions. In addition to eliciting partic-ipants’ predictions of performance, we also character-ize children’s causal understandings about themechanisms responsible for these effects by elicitingtheir explanations about why and how these factorsaffect thinking. Multiple-assessment approachesmeasuring both predictions and explanations areespecially revealing about the development ofchildren’s knowledge (see Lagattuta, 2005; Wellman& Lagattuta, 2000; Wellman & Liu, 2004). We includeadults to compare their reasoning to that of youngchildren.

Method

Participants

Participantswere 72 children, 24 children at each ofthree age levels: 5-year-olds (M5 5.7 years; SD5 0.2;13 girls and 11 boys), 6-year-olds (M 5 6.3; SD 5 0.2;12 girls and 12 boys), and 7-year-olds (M5 7.2, SD5

0.4; 10 girls and 14 boys). Children were recruitedfrom two elementary schools in a large metropolitanarea and from a university-maintained database ofresearch volunteers. According to self-report, thesample was 75% Caucasian, 15% Asian, 4%Hispanic,3% American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 7% otherbackgrounds. Parents provided information abouttheir educational attainment: 86% of children camefrom homes where both parents had completedcollege and 64% of children had at least one parentwith a graduate or professional degree. A sample of24 college students (M 5 18.9 years, SD 5 0.7; 12women and 12men) froman introductory psychologycourse served as the adult comparison group. Theadult sample was 46% Caucasian, 42% Asian, 8%Hispanic, and 12% other backgrounds.

Procedure

Task description and materials. We created a storytask to test children’s and adults’ knowledge aboutthe effects of different kinds of internal states andexternal conditions on cognitive performance. Therewere 15 scenarios in total (see Appendix for samplestories). All stories had a similar structure and usedlanguage appropriate for young children. There wereboth male and female protagonists, and characters

depicted in the drawings had a range of hair and skintones appropriate to the participant sample.

The eight focal stories featured characters who hadto complete challenging cognitive tasks after experi-encing an event that produced a negative or positivechange in their physiological or emotional state. Specif-ically, four stories described characters who experi-enced positive (full/healthy and wide awake) ornegative (hungry and tired) physiological states andfour stories described events that caused the characterto have positive (happy and proud) or negative (sadand mad) emotions. We selected these particularemotions because even 4-year-olds show a basicunderstanding of all these emotions, can categorizethem as negative or positive in valence, and canidentify their expression (Harris, Olthof, Terwogt, &Hardman, 1987; Russell & Paris, 1994; Tracy, Robins,& Lagattuta, 2005). Although studies have shown thatchildren younger than 7 years sometimes have diffi-culty understanding causes of pride, they show clearknowledge that it is a positive emotion related tohappiness (e.g., Harter &Whitesell, 1989; Lagattuta &Thompson, 2007).

To compare children’s understanding of internalstates versus other relevant external factors, twonoisy – quiet stories described protagonists workingin either very noisy or very quiet work environments.Several additional scenario types were included ascontrol conditions, allowing us to assess whetherchildren could appropriately restrict predictions ofperformance improvements and impairments tocases where relevant changes took place. For thesestory types, it would bemost appropriate to expect nochange in story characters’ task performance. In the no-change control story, no new events or state changesoccurred. Neutral-change control stories describedchanges (e.g., wearing blue clothing, having a newrug in the classroom) that were neutral in valence andshould have no impact on characters’ task perfor-mance. Valence-change control stories describedchanges that were positive or negative (hair lookingmessy vs. nice) but still should not affect task perfor-mance. Valence stories tested whether childrenmightrely only on valence to predict performance (e.g.,linking any ‘‘negative change’’ to poorer perfor-mance). Changes to hair were useful for this purposebecause these had positive or negative valence butwere not directly visible to the story protagonist,thereby reducing the potential for cognitive effectssuch as distraction.

Simple colorful pictures were used to illustrate theevents of each story during task presentation, asshown in the example in Figure 1. Here, a girl losesher favorite teddy bear on the way to school and feels

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sad. Later that day she is still feeling sad about it,when her teacher gives her class a difficult mathassignment. We wanted to know whether childrenwould predict changes to the story character’s schoolperformance in such cases.

Pictures were displayed on laminated 5 � 6-inchcards that were laid out on the table in front of thechild as the researcher narrated each story. Picturesets were carefully constructed to control for severalfactors. First, all picture sets had a focal image thatdepicted the central subject matter of the story – thatis, the characters’ internal state, outward appearance,or surrounding environment. Emotional state stories(see Figure 1) accomplished thiswith a close-up of thecharacter’s face showing an unambiguous emotionalexpression (sad 5 down-turned mouth, mad 5

slanted eyebrows and straight mouth; happy andproud 5 upturned mouth). Second, to minimizeemotional confounds in other story types, charactersin nonemotion stories were shown with their facesobscured or cropped from the image. For example,‘‘feeling hungry’’ used a cropped image of the char-acter’s torso with his hands clutching his belly.‘‘Feeling tired’’ depicted the character with droopingeyelids brushing her teeth in the morning with thetoothbrush covering the mouth. The last image foreach story (shown during the target question) alwaysdepicted the child from behind, seated at a schooldesk, so that no facial expression could be discerned.

The target question for each story asked children topredict the character’s performance on a school task.Across the 15 stories, seven different tasks weredescribed. Thesewere selected to reflect various types

of school subjects and thinking processes that arefamiliar and understandable to 5- to 7-year-old chil-dren: doingmath problems, learning science, readinga story, taking a spelling test, remembering picturesfrom a book (memory), playing a word game (lan-guage arts), and following directions to make a paperairplane (spatial reasoning and problem solving). Tocontrol for the fact that children might view sometasks as easier than others (and, therefore, less likelyto be affected by changes in the character’s internalstates—see Flavell & Flavell, 2004), the teacher in thestory always described tasks as ‘‘pretty hard.’’ In pilottesting, a group of 10 children (M age5 6.5, SD5 0.3;5 boys and 5 girls) listened to the stories and rated thedifficulty of each task on a 3-point scale, from 0 (nothard at all), to 1 (kind of hard), to 2 (very hard). Theaverage rating across all school tasks was 1.2, withmeans for individual tasks ranging from 0.9 to 1.7. Foreach item, 70%– 100% of children rated the task as‘‘kind of hard’’ or ‘‘very hard.’’ Thus, children per-ceived most tasks as moderately difficult.

Task presentation. Children were tested individu-ally either in a university laboratory or in a quiet areaof their school. Sessions lasted approximately 25 minand were videotaped. For each story, children wereasked to predict the story character’s performance andto explain their prediction. Children made their pre-dictions of performance on apictorial rating scale. Thescale was a laminated 12.5 � 3.5-inch card showingfive yellow stars of increasing size. At the start of thesession, the researcher instructed children to ‘‘use thestars to say how well the people in the stories aredoing on things’’ and explained that the center star

Figure 1. Sample pictures and story text from the task.

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was for when people do about the same as they usuallydo, the two small stars were for when people doworsethan they usually do, and the two big stars were forwhen people do better than they usually do. Morespecifically, the labels given to each star (in ascendingorder) were: a lot worse, a little bit worse, about the same,a little bit better, and a lot better.To reinforce this visuallyand to anchor the scale around the midpoint, thecenter star was presented with a pale blue back-ground and the other stars had a white background.

Warm-up tasks trained children how to use thescale tomake judgments about people’s performance.The first warm-up task required children make judg-ments using all points of the scale, including the ‘‘no-change’’ response. The researcher showed childrena series of drawings about a girl (‘‘Janet’’) who isplaying a game to see howhigh she can jump. The firstdrawing depicted Janet’s typical performance (‘‘Usu-ally Janet can jump this high. That’s how high shejumps most of the time.’’). Three additional drawingsshowed Janet jumping: (a) higher than she usuallydoes, (b) lower than she usually does, and (c) thesame as she usually does. Children were shown eachdrawing in turn and were asked to use the scale torespond to the question: ‘‘How did Janet do thistime—the same as she usually does, or better, orworse?’’ (If children said ‘‘better’’ or ‘‘worse,’’ theywere subsequently asked to indicate on the scalewhether they thought it was a lot or a little bit worse/better.) Children’s responses to the three questionswere recorded and errors corrected as necessary.

The second warm-up task elicited children’s judg-ments about the impact of high versus low effort oncognitive performance, something children of this ageshould understand (Miller & Shannon, 1984; Miller &Zalenski, 1982). Children were shown a drawing ofa boy (‘‘Casey’’) sitting at a school desk and wereasked to predict his school performance based on hislevel of effort and attention. First, they predictedCasey’s performance when ‘‘Casey isn’t trying to dowell on his school work at all’’ and does not look orlisten to his teacher. Then, they predicted Casey’sperformance when ‘‘Casey is really trying extra hardto do a good job on his school work’’ and looks andlistens carefully to his teacher. Failure to predictimpaired performance in the first case and improvedperformance in the second case was noted but notcorrected.

Finally, before proceeding to the experimental task,the researcher listed each response option and askedchildren to point to the corresponding star (e.g.,‘‘Which star is for when people do about the sameas they usually do?’’) in the order: about the same (nochange), a little bit better, a lot better, a little bit worse, a lot

worse. Children were corrected as necessary and didnot proceed to themain task until they couldmatch allresponses correctly. If children made two or moreerrors on any of the five warm-up task questions, orcould not learn the points of the scale even aftercorrection by the researcher, theywere not included inthe final sample.

For the experimental task, the researcher read eachstory aloud and children predicted the character’sperformance using the scale. After each prediction,children were also asked to explain their responses(e.g., ‘‘Why do you think she will do worse thistime?’’). Explanations were requested for all trials,regardless ofwhether children predicted impairment,improvement, or no change. If children said ‘‘I don’tknow’’ or failed to respond, requestswere repeated. Ifchildren explained the character’s performance inrelation to an internal state or external condition butdid not describe why or how that factor wouldinfluence performance (e.g., ‘‘She’ll doworse becauseshe’s sad’’), the researcher requested more informa-tion (e.g., ‘‘Why will it make her do worse if she’ssad?’’). When it was clear that children had no furtherexplanations, the experimenter proceeded to the nexttrial. Children’s explanations were transcribed verba-tim from the videotapes and coded for the type ofexplanation given (see below).

Adult participants received the task as a writtenquestionnaire. Participants read each scenario andmade predictions about the protagonist’s perfor-mance on a 5-point numerical scale, with pointslabeled as described above for children. They alsoprovided written explanations for their responses.Pictures were not used with the task for adults.

Story order and counterbalancing. For all partici-pants, the first scenario presented was the no-changecontrol story, in which the character experienced nonew events or state changes. This was because we didnot want to prime children to attend to characters’emotions or internal states. Presentation order for theremaining 14 stories was counterbalanced by divid-ing the stories into two blocks of seven stories, witheach block containing one example of each story type:positive emotion, negative emotion, positive physio-logical state, negative physiological state, noisy –quiet, neutral change, and valence change. Twodifferent groupings, determined by randomly assign-ing stories to blocks, were used (Half of the partic-ipants received proud, sad, wide awake, hungry, differentclothes, messy hair, and quiet room as one block, andhappy,mad, full/healthy, tired, new rug, and noisy room asthe other. The other half of the participants receivedan alternate grouping.). To control for order effects,presentation order for each task block (first vs.

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second) was counterbalanced within age groups, andscenario order was randomizedwithin blocks. Schooltasks (e.g., reading, math) were varied across storiesso that each participant received one example of eachschool task per block of seven stories. Within agegroups, school tasks were assigned to stories so thatall possible combinations were represented, and eachcombination appeared with similar frequency (i.e.,3 – 4 times per age group).

Explanation coding. Participants’ explanations re-flected a range of ideas about the factors influencingcharacters’ task performance. From careful reading ofthe complete transcripts, we identified 10 categoriesof explanations, including references to: character’sgeneral ability level; the difficulty of the school task;motivations or desires; perceptions; emotions; phys-iological states; cognitive functioning; past, present,or future events; and social or moral rules. Anadditional category included ‘‘don’t know,’’ noresponse, off-topic, or responses that did not fit intoother categories. Descriptions of the codes and exam-ples are given in Table 1. For each story trial,a response could be coded into one or multiplecategories. For example, the explanation, ‘‘She’ll domuch better because she’s feeling happy and thatmakes her concentrate even harder’’ would be codedas both an emotion and a cognition explanation. In thisexample, the participant refers to the character’semotion as the cause of the performance (‘‘becauseshe’s feeling happy’’) and further elaborates on howthe character’s emotional state affects her cognition(‘‘that makes her concentrate even harder’’).

Explanations were coded by two independentraters using transcripts that concealed participants’age, race, and sex. To analyze the frequency of specificexplanation categories as a function of scenario typeand age, each trial was coded for the presence (1) or

absence (0) of each of the 10 explanation categories.Values were then summed by story type to yield thenumber of scenarios for which participants gave eachexplanation. As a check of interrater agreement, 20%of the data were coded by both raters and kappascalculated for each coding category. Kappas rangedfrom .75 to .94 (M 5 .88), indicating high interrateragreement.

Results

Warm-Up Task Performance and Rating Scale Use

Only one child, a 5 year old, was disqualified fromthe study because he failed to show adequate under-standing of the scale during the warm-up task. Thischild was replaced. All children in the final sampledemonstrated competence with the scale by correctlyanswering at least four of the five warm-up questionsand successfully matching all points of the scale withthe appropriate verbal labels. Most children (83%)had perfect performance on the five warm-up ques-tions. Errors were not more common among youngerchildren: Of the 12 children who missed a warm-upquestion, three were 5-year-olds, two were 6-year-olds, and sevenwere 7-year-olds.Most children (93%)also correctly identified all five points of the scalewhen questioned about them directly. Five children(three 5-year-olds and two 7-year-olds) made initialerrors but were successful after feedback from theresearcher. On the main task, there were no observedage differences in themean number of scale points (offive) participants used, F(3, 92)5 0.80, p. .05. Meansfor 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults,respectively, were: 4.0 (SD 5 0.9), 4.3 (SD 5 0.7), 4.3(SD 5 0.7), and 4.3 (SD 5 0.8).

Table 1

Explanation Coding Category Descriptions and Examples

Coding category Description Example

Situation References to past, present, or future events ‘‘Because she lost her teddy bear.’’

Emotional state References to character’s emotional state ‘‘Because she’s feeling happy.’’

Physiological state References to character’s body or physiological state ‘‘Because he’s hungry.’’

Cognition References to character’s thoughts, cognitive functioning,

or brain

‘‘Because he won’t be able to concentrate.’’

Motivation References to character’s motivations or desires ‘‘Because she doesn’t feel like doing her math.’’

Ability References to character’s general ability level ‘‘Because he’s old enough to read stories.’’

Task References to the difficulty of the school task ‘‘Because spelling is hard.’’

Perception References to the character’s perceptions or senses ‘‘Because he might not be able to hear very well.’’

Social/moral rules References to social or moral rules ‘‘Because he’s supposed to listen to his teacher.’’

No code Uncodable responses ‘‘I don’t know.’’

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Prediction Data

Figure 2 displays participants’ mean ratings ofstory characters’ task performance by age and storytype. Participants’ responses were converted to a �2(a lot worse) to +2 (a lot better) scale, with 0 (same as

usual) as the midpoint. For3 most analyses, repeatedmeasures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were usedto test for age and story type effects, post hoc com-parisons were performed with Tukey’s HSD, andeffect sizes are presented as partial eta squares.Additionally, one-sample t tests were used to assesswhether the absolute amount of impairment or im-provement participants predicted was significantlydifferent from 0, the scale midpoint.

Preliminary analyses tested for effects of sex,scenario order, and school task. Sex and order effectswere tested by including each of these variables,

along with age, as independent variables in repeatedmeasuresANOVAs for each story type.No significantmain effects or interactions for sex or scenario orderwere observed, F, 2.62, p. .05. To test for school taskeffects, separate 4 (age) � 7(school task) ANOVAswere conducted on each scenario, treating school taskas a random factor. Again, no significant effects werefound, F , 1.67, p . .05.

Emotional and physiological state stories. Emotionaland physiological state stories described characterswho experienced positive or negative changes intheir internal states. These scenarios were the pri-mary focus of our study. Prediction data wereanalyzed with a 4 (age) � 2 (state: emotional orphysiological) � 2 (valence: positive or negative)repeatedmeasuresANOVA, yielding amain effect ofvalence,F(1, 92)5 432.7,p, .001, g2p 5 .83.As shown inFigure 2, participants more frequently judged that

-2 -1 0 1 2

No Change

Neutral Change

Nice Hair

Messy Hair

Quiet Room

Noisy Room

Positive Physiological State

Negative Physiological State

Positive Emotion

Negative Emotion

5 years

6 years

7 years

Adult

Predicted Performance on School Tasks

Figure 2. Mean ratings of story characters’ performance by age and story type. Ratings greater than zero indicate predictions of improvedperformance, ratings less than zero indicate predictions of impaired performance, and ratings equal to zero indicate predictions of no changein performance. Error bars are standard errors of the means.

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characters experiencing positive internal stateswould show improved performance, whereas charac-ters experiencing negative internal states wouldshow impaired performance. Analyses confirmedthat the valence effect was significant for bothemotional, F(1, 95) 5 190.78, p , .001, g2p 5 .67, andphysiological state stories, F(1, 95) 5 422.22, p , .001,g2p 5 .82.

A State � Valence interaction, F(1, 92)5 26.86, p,.001, g2p 5 .23, indicated that valence effects werestronger for physiological states than for emotionalstates. Simple effects tests showed that on average,participants predicted more improvement for posi-tive physiological states than for positive emotionalstates (M 5 +1.1 vs. +0.6, of a maximum possiblerating of +2), F(1, 95) 5 18.28, p , .001, g2p 5 .16, andmore impairment for negative physiological statesthan for negative emotional states (M5�1.4 vs.�1.2of a maximum possible rating of�2), F(1, 95)5 11.51,p , .01, g2p 5 .11. There was also an Age � Valenceinteraction, F(3, 92)5 3.37, p, .05, g2p 5 .10, indicatingthat age differences in participants’ reasoning aboutinternal states were restricted to children’s judgmentsabout positive, F(3, 92)5 2.74, p, .05, g2p 5 .08, ratherthan negative, F(3, 92) 5 1.13, p . .05, internal states.As shown in Figure 2, 7-year-olds and adults pre-dicted significantly higher levels of improvement forpositive internal states than did younger children, p,.05 (Tukey’s HSD).

One-sample t tests confirmed that in contrast to 7-year-olds and adults, the absolute improvement 5-and 6-year-olds predicted for positive emotion storieswas not consistently greater than 0. In contrast, all agegroups’ ratings for positive physiological state, neg-ative physiological state, and negative emotional statestories differed significantly from 0, t(23) . 3.31, p ,

.01. Indeed, as shown in Table 2, even individual-level data revealed that 75%– 96% of 5-year-oldssuccessfully predicted impairment of performancein negative state cases—performance comparable tothat of 7-year-olds and adults.

Additional Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests on thefrequency data in Table 2 compared improvement,impairment, and no-change predictions within storytypes to test whether participants responded simi-larly to the two scenarios within each of the fourstory categories—for example, answering similarly tohappy and proud (positive emotion) scenarios. Three ofthe four story types showed no itemdifferences at anyage. The only difference occurred for positive phys-ical state stories, z5�2.17, p, .05, where 5-year-oldsand adults, but not 6- and 7-year-olds, gave moreimprovement predictions to the ‘‘wide awake’’ storyversus the ‘‘full/healthy’’ story.

Several different patterns of individual respondingcould have produced nonsignificant groupmeans foryounger children in positive emotion cases: (a) fre-quent predictions of ‘‘no change’’; (b) equal numbersof children predicting impairment, improvement,and no change; or (c) a bimodal response patternwithsome children predicting improvement and othersimpairment. Chi-square tests indicated that 5- and 6-year-olds were not performing at chance on the twopositive emotion stories, v2(2, N 5 24) . 7.0, p , .05,and individual-level data were more consistent witha bimodal pattern. As shown in Table 2, a substantialproportion of younger children actually predictedimpairment for these two cases. Although adultsdid not always predict performance improvementsdue to positive internal states, they rarely predictedimpaired performance in these cases, instead predict-ing no change. We explore participants’ reasoningabout these effects further when we consider theexplanation data (see below).

Noisy – quiet stories. The noisy – quiet storiesdescribed characters who experienced either noisyor quiet environments while performing school tasks.A 4 (age) � 2 (story version: noisy or quiet) ANOVAshowed a significant effect of story version, F(1, 92)5235.07, p , .001, g2p 5 .72, with no age effects. T testsshowed that all ages predicted significant improve-ment of performance for quiet and significant impair-ment of performance for noise, p , .05.

No-change control story. The no-change controlstory described a character who experienced no newevents or internal state changes. Results of a one-wayANOVA revealed significant age differences in par-ticipants’ performance ratings, F(3, 92)5 3.05, p, .05,g2p 5 .09. One-sample t tests showed that both 5- and6-year-olds predicted significant improvement inthe character’s performance, even though the exper-imenter mentioned no change in internal states orexternal factors, p , .05, whereas 7-year-olds andadults predicted no change.

Neutral-change control stories. Neutral-change con-trol stories described neutral events that wereunlikely to affect characters’ internal states or cogni-tive performance (e.g., new rug in the classroom). Forthese cases, no significant age effects were found formean performance ratings, F(3, 92) 5 0.49, p . .05,g2p 5 .02, and absolute amounts of improvement/impairment were nonsignificant, p . .05. Individual-level data (see Table 2) indicated somewhat differentpatterns of responding for the ‘‘rug’’ and ‘‘clothes’’stories: Compared to adults, children were morelikely to predict impairment in the rug story, v2(6,N5 96)5 23.20, and improvement in the clothes story,v2(6, N 5 96) 5 21.83, p , .01.

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Valence-change control stories. Changes in outwardappearance (nice vs. messy hair) were expected tohave little bearing on characters’ cognitive perfor-mance. A 4 (age) � 2 (valence: positive or negative)ANOVA, however, revealed a main effect of valence,F(1, 92) 5 30.09, p , .001, g2p 5 .25, with participantspredicting better performance for nice hair andworseperformance for messy hair. One-sample t testsshowed that all three child age groups reportedsignificant impairment in characters’ performance inthe messy hair story, p , .05, but the degree ofimprovement predicted in the nice hair story wasnot significantly different from 0. Means for adults(improvement or impairment) were nonsignificant.

Explanation Data

As described in the Method, participants’ explan-ations for story characters’ performance in eachscenario were scored for the presence (1) or absence(0) of each of the 10 explanation categories listed inTable 1. The no-code, moral/social rules, perception,ability, task, and motivation explanations appearedtoo infrequently to support analyses (M, 1.5 trials of15). Thus, analyses were restricted to situation, emo-tion, physiological, and cognitive explanation types.Collapsed by age, overall means for these categories(in number of trials out of 15) were as follows: forsituation, M 5 8.2, SD 5 2.5; for emotion, M 5 4.5,SD 5 1.9; for physiological, M 5 2.9, SD 5 1.3; and

Table 2

Number of Participants Predicting Impairment, No Change, and Improvement of Cognitive Performance by Story Type and Age

Emotional state stories

Happy Proud Sad Mad

Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve

5 years 10 2 12 9 2 13 18 4 2 21 1 2

6 years 9 2 13 6 3 15 19 3 2 20 2 2

7 years 6 4 14 4 1 19 21 3 0 20 2 2

Adult 0 10 14 4 5 15 24 0 0 22 1 1

Physiological state stories

Full/healthy Wide awake Hungry Tired

Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve

5 years 8 3 13 3 4 17 23 1 0 23 1 0

6 years 4 5 15 3 6 15 21 2 1 23 0 1

7 years 1 3 20 2 1 21 21 2 1 24 0 0

Adult 0 7 17 0 1 23 23 1 0 24 0 0

Other stories

Different Clothing Different Rug Nice Hair Messy Hair

Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve

5 years 6 8 10 13 7 4 6 8 10 14 7 3

6 years 6 12 6 11 7 6 5 10 9 11 10 3

7 years 4 13 7 7 12 5 6 9 9 13 9 2

Adult 1 23 0 2 21 1 1 17 6 4 20 0

Quiet room Noisy room No change (baseline)

Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve Impair No change Improve

5 years 4 2 18 22 1 1 4 8 12

6 years 6 4 14 24 0 0 2 9 13

7 years 1 4 19 22 0 2 3 15 6

Adult 2 7 15 23 1 0 4 17 3

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for cognitive, M 5 5.8, SD 5 3.3. Mean scores by ageand story type are given in Figure 3 (Recall that therewere two trials for each story type; thus, the maxi-mum score for each explanation category is 2.). Datawere analyzed with repeated measures ANOVA.

Emotional and physiological state stories. As shownin Figure 3, the most frequent explanation types foremotional state stories were emotion, situation, andcognitive explanations, and the most frequent expla-nation types for physiological state stories werephysiological, situation, and cognitive explanations.Two separate 4 (age) � 2 (state: emotional or physi-ological) � 2 (valence: positive or negative) repeatedmeasures ANOVAs on emotion and physiologicalexplanations confirmedmain effects of state: Emotionexplanations were more frequent for emotional statestories, F(1, 92) 5 721.99, p , .001, g2p 5 .89, andphysiological explanations were more frequent forphysiological state stories, F(1, 92)5 502.73, p, .001,g2p 5 .85. There was also a State � Valence interactionfor physiological explanations, F(1, 92) 5 21.27, p ,

.001, g2p 5 .19. Simple effects analyses showed thatparticipants offered more physiological explanationsin negative versus positive physiological state stories,F(1, 95) 5 23.10, p , .001, g2p 5 .20, but rates ofphysiological explanations were similarly low forboth positive and negative emotion stories. Therewere no age effects for these explanation types.

In contrast, results for cognitive explanationsshowed significant main effects for age, F(3, 92) 5

4.29, p, .05, g2p 5 .11, and valence, F(1, 92)5 12.62, p,.01, g2p 5 .12, both qualified by a significant Age �Valence interaction, F(3, 92) 5 6.40, p , .01, g2p 5 .17.

Although adults made more references to the cogni-tive consequences of emotional and physiologicalstate changes than 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds (Tukey’sHSD), this age effect was restricted to negative, F(3,92)5 7.78, p, .001, g2p5 .20, versus positive,F(3, 92)50.51, p . .05, stories. Separate analyses by valencefurther demonstrated an Age � State interaction forpositive stories, F(3, 92) 5 3.58, p , .05, g2p 5 .10. AsFigure 3 shows, there were no observable age differ-ences in cognitive explanations for positive emotionstories, F(3, 92) 5 0.63, p . .05, but rates of cognitiveexplanation increased with age for positive physio-logical state stories, F(3, 92) 5 2.78, p , .05, g2p 5 .08.

Parallel analyses for situation explanations alsoshowed age effects, F(3, 92) 5 2.88, p , .05, g2p 5 .09,with levels decreasing with age (Tukey’s HSD indi-cated significant differences between children andadults, p , .05). There was also a Valence � Stateinteraction, F(1, 92) 5 17.48, p , .001, g2p 5 .16, thatappeared to reflect higher levels of situation explan-ations in negative emotion and positive physiologicalstate cases and lower levels in positive emotion andnegative physiological state cases.

Descriptive data provide further details about thecontent and sophistication of children’s verbal re-sponses. Over the full set of emotional and physio-logical state stories, children cited the character’sinternal state as the cause of their task performancefor nearly six of the eight trials (M 5 5.9, SD 5 1.7).This rate is comparable to that of adults (M 5 5.2,SD 5 1.7). Of particular interest was the extent towhich participants explained connections betweeninternal states and academic performance by citing

Figure 3. Frequency of explanation categories by age and story type. The figure shows the mean number of story trials (of a maximum of 2)for which participants gave each type of explanation. Data are shown for the most frequent explanation categories only.

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underlying cognitive mechanisms. Both 5- and 6-year-olds described cognitive mechanisms for emo-tional or physiological state effects in 34% of the caseswhere they provided either an emotion or a physio-logical explanation, with 7-year-olds doing so in 41%cases and adults doing so in 56% cases. For all agegroups, the majority of cognitive explanationsfocused on the impact of the internal state on thecharacter’s attention to the task at hand (e.g.,‘‘Because she’s sad, so she won’t concentrate on thebook. She’ll just think about her teddy bear.’’). Suchresponses constituted 83% of 5-year-olds’, 73% of 6-and 7-year-olds’, and 82% of adults’ cognitive ex-planations. References to other kinds of effects, suchas effects onmemory or learning (e.g., ‘‘Because if shegets more sleep then she can think more’’), were lessfrequent, as were references to effects on the brain(e.g., ‘‘Because he’s healthy it helps his brain’’). Onaverage, these constituted 16% and 6% of partici-pants’ responses, respectively.

Finally, recall that the prediction data reportedpreviously showed that some younger children pre-dicted impairment for characters in positive emotionstories. Across all three child groups, the high major-ity (70%) of children explained this prediction bystating that the character would have difficulty con-centrating or paying attention as the result of thepositive emotion (e.g., ‘‘Because he feels so proud ofhimself, so he’s distracted with how proud he is’’).Thus, children also showed awareness that positiveemotions can have negative effects on cognition.

Noisy – quiet stories. Situation and cognitive ex-planations were the most frequent explanation typesfor the noisy – quiet stories at all ages. Cognitiveexplanations increased with age, F(3, 92) 5 5.68, p ,

.001, g2p 5 .16. Post hoc tests with Tukey’s HSDrevealed that 5- and 6-year-olds gave fewer cognitiveexplanations than 7-year-olds and adults, p , .05.

No-change control story. Because participants onlyreceived one no-change control trial, explanation datawere analyzed with chi-square. Results showed thatemotion explanations increased with age, v2(3, N 5

96), p , .001, from 0% of 5-year-olds’ explanations to25% of adults’ explanations. Ability explanationswere the most frequently given explanation type forboth children and adults; 47% of children and 67% ofadults referenced the characters’ ability level in re-sponding to the baseline case.

Neutral-change and valence-change control stories.Situation, emotion, and cognitive explanation typeswere the most frequent explanation categories forneutral change and valence control stories at all ages.No significant age differences were observed for anyexplanation type. Interestingly, emotion explanations

for the valence control stories (e.g., ‘‘Maybe she’s alittle embarrassed because her hair is all messy.’’)were more frequent than expected at all ages andsuggested that participants often inferred changes instory characters’ emotions as a result of having messyor nice hair. In 40 of 55 cases of predicted impairment(73%) and 12 of 36 cases of predicted improvement(33%) in the valence control scenarios, children citeda change in the characters’ emotion as causing a changein task performance. Adults less frequently predictedperformance changes for these stories, but those whodid cited emotional causes. In four of five cases ofpredicted impairment (80%) and all six cases of pre-dicted improvement (100%), adults cited emotionaleffects.

Explanations for predictions of ‘‘change’’ versus ‘‘nochange’’. The preceding analyses included all explan-ations participants provided to account for storycharacters’ school performance, regardless ofwhether they were predicting impairment, improve-ment, or no change in performance. Final analysesthus examined whether explanations differed sys-tematically by prediction type. Of central interestwere effects for cognitive explanations, as these explan-ations index robust knowledge about mind-body andemotion-thought connections and also showed theclearest increases with age. Because the number ofchange versus no-change predictions varied for eachparticipant, analyses of prediction type effects usedproportional data (i.e., for each prediction type, thenumber of trials with cognitive explanations dividedby the total number of trials of that type). Data for all15 trials were included for each participant.

A 4 (age) � 3 (prediction type: impairment,improvement, or no change) repeated measures AN-OVA found a significant effect of prediction type, F(2,168)5 42.0, p, .001, g2p 5 .33, and a significant Age�Prediction Type interaction, F(6, 168)5 4.41, p, .001,g2p 5 .14. Simple effects analyses indicated thatparticipants were more likely to cite cognitive mech-anisms when predicting change (M proportion oftrials 5 0.47, SD 5 0.26) versus no change (M 5

0.18, SD5 0.28) in story characters’ performance, F(1,85) 5 86.93, p , .001, g2p 5 .51. They were also morelikely to cite cognitive mechanisms when predictingimpairment (M 5 0.51, SD 5 0.30) versus improve-ment (M5 0.39, SD5 0.31), F(1, 94)5 10.10, p, .01, g2p5 .10. Analyses by age group indicated that thegeneral pattern of providing more cognitive explan-ations for change versus no-change predictions wasupheld at all ages, all ps , .05, with one exception.Five-year-olds provided cognitive explanations sig-nificantly more often for performance impairment(M 5 0.41, SD 5 0.24) compared to improvement

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(M 5 0.24, SD 5 0.29) or no change (M 5 0.19, SD 5

0.32), F . 6.65, p , .05; however, they were no morelikely to cite cognitive mechanisms when predictingimprovement versusno change,F(1, 21)5 0.53, p. .05.

Discussion

The goal of this research was to assess young child-ren’s understanding of the effects of emotional andphysiological states on cognitive performance andthereby to shed light on children’s theory-of-minddevelopment and their practical know-how aboutthinking and learning. Our results demonstrate that5- to 7-year-olds are indeed aware that emotions andphysiological states can significantly enhance orimpair performance on cognitively demanding tasks.At the same time, however, there are clear develop-mental changes in children’s ability to predict andexplain these effects.

Prior research (e.g., Bennett & Galpert, 1992; Miller& Shannon, 1984, Pillow, 1989) has shown that by 5 – 6years of age, children understand that certain internalfactors (interest, effort, and sadness) and externalfactors (environmental noise) affect people’s perfor-mance on thinking and learning tasks. These areimportant conceptual achievements that reflect child-ren’s mastery of basic theory-of-mind concepts—forexample, the link between people’s goals and theiractions and the significance of perceptual access forknowledge acquisition (e.g., Flavell, 2004; Wellman &Lagattuta, 2000). Aspects of our own data confirmthese prior findings. In our warm-up task, childrenreliably predicted that listening and trying hardwould lead to better performance on school workand that not listening and not trying would lead topoorer performance. Moreover, in the experimentaltask, children performed near ceiling (and at adultlevels) in predicting that performancewould improvein a quiet environment and decline in a noisy envi-ronment and that strong negative emotions (sadnessand anger)would have anegative impact on cognitivefunctioning.

We also present new data on young children’sreasoning about the cognitive effects of a widervariety of internal and external states. Although pre-vious studies have reported that children show anearlier understanding of internal versus externalinfluences on cognition (e.g., Miller & Shannon,1984; Miller & Weiss, 1982), our results demonstratethat over a broader range of factors such develop-mental patterns are more nuanced. Specifically, wefound evidence of three important developmentalchanges in children’s reasoning about the influence

of internal states on cognitive performance: (a) Chil-dren understand impairment of cognitive perfor-mance due to negative internal states earlier thanthey understand enhancement due to positive inter-nal states; (b) With age, children increasingly refer-ence cognitive mechanisms such as distraction toexplain the impact of internal state changes on taskperformance, especially in situations involvingimpaired performance; and (c) With age, childrenimprove in their ability to differentiate factors that doand do not impact cognitive performance.

Understanding Impairment Before Enhancement

Young children predicted performance decre-ments due to negative internal states more often thanthey predicted performance improvements due topositive internal states. Predicting positive effects ofpositive internal states increased from 5 to 7 years,with this age effect most pronounced for positiveemotions. Although 5- and 6-year-olds predictedsignificant improvements due to positive physiolog-ical states, only 7-year-olds and adults predictedsignificant improvements due to positive emotions.It is worth noting that even adults were not unani-mous in their judgments about the effects of positiveinternal states; they treated the connection betweenpositive states and improvement as weaker than theconnection between negative states and impairment.Indeed, 10 of 24 adults (42%) reported that feelinghappy or proud would have no effect on task perfor-mance. Here, the adult folk theory reflects findingsfrom behavioral studies: The impairing effects ofnegative emotions typically are more robust than theenhancing effects of positive emotions. Indeed, somestudies have found that positive moods can impairperformance (e.g., Forgas, 1995; George&Zhou, 2002;Phillips, Bull, Adams, & Fraser, 2002). Another pos-sible reason for weaker effects for positive statechanges has to do with how people understand thebaseline against which state changes are calibrated:Both children and adults may assume that positivestates (i.e., being rested, happy, satiated) are morenormative in people’s everyday lives compared tonegative states, leading to smaller perceived effectsfor further positive changes.

Children’s vigilance about factors that impaircognitive performance is remarkable in light of abun-dant evidence that children tend to be overly opti-mistic about their own and others’ cognitive abilities,a tendency that persists even when tasks are difficultand there is a prior history of failure (e.g., Lockhart,Chang, & Story, 2002; Parsons & Ruble, 1977; Stipek&Hoffman, 1980). Paradoxically, we found that young

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children tended to predict performance decrementseven due to positive internal states. These datasuggest that impairment effects may have a certainprimacy or salience in children’s causal understand-ing about the influence of emotions and body stateson cognition. Children’s tendency to predict impair-ment for a wide range of cases also demonstrates thattheir success on the taskwas not simply accomplishedvia a valence-matching heuristic—that is, predictingpositive outcomes for positive events and negativeoutcomes for negative events (see Amsterlaw, 2006;Piaget, 1932).

Why should children exhibit earlier and betterunderstanding of factors that impair cognitive per-formance versus factors that enhance thinking andlearning? One likely reason is that children spendmore time thinking and talking about the causes andconsequences of negative internal states. In general,people are far more likely to seek reasons for theirfailures than for their successes (see Roese, 1997;Roese & Hur, 1997; Weiner, 1985). Developmentalstudies of natural language data mirror this. Lagattutaand Wellman (2002) found that 2- to 5-year-oldchildren talk more frequently with their parentsabout causes of emotions during everyday conversa-tions about negative as opposed to positive emotions.Young children also demonstrate greater knowledgeabout the influence of thinking on negative asopposed to positive emotions (Lagattuta & Wellman,2001).

Increasing References to CognitiveMechanisms with Age

Across multiple story types, there was a develop-mental increase in cognitive explanations to accountfor changes in characters’ task performance. This isconsistentwith previous reports indicating that child-ren’s metacognitive knowledge about attentionalfocus and control improves considerably betweenthe ages of 4 and 8 years (see Flavell, 2004). Here, itis interesting to note that younger children success-fully predicted the effects of emotions and physiolog-ical states on academic performance prior to beingable to explain the underlying cognitive mechanisms.Young children may have a more limited causalunderstanding about why these phenomena occur.Indeed, some younger children may view mecha-nisms in terms of changes in perception rather than inchanges in cognition. Compared to older children andadults, 5- and 6-year-olds more often describedchanges in characters’ performance as caused bychanges in their ability to see or hear the teacher,rather than changes in their ability to think, attend, orconcentrate. For example, some young children said

that feeling tired would cause a child to do morepoorly because she would close her eyes and not seethe teacher. Such perception-related explanationssignificantly declined with age (a one-way ANOVAas a function of agewas significant, F(3, 88)5 4.04, p,.05). A transition from a perceptual to a cognitiveunderstanding of performance is consistent withtheory-of-mind research demonstrating that childrenunderstand perception – knowledge links prior tomasteringmore complex understandings of cognitiveprocesses (Wellman & Liu, 2004).

Participants of all ages, including adults, madeexplicit references to underlying cognitive causesmore often when explaining why a character’s per-formance would decline versus why it wouldimprove or stay the same. This again demonstratesthat children show earlier, more sophisticated under-standings of impairment versus enhancement andthat adults also show a clearer understanding ofcognitive mechanisms underlying impairment. Nota-bly, there are no studies in the metacognition litera-ture about whether children understand causes ofimpaired memory or problem solving prior to under-standing causes of enhanced cognition. This is likelythe result of a heavy focus on children’s knowledgeabout strategies that improve rather than degradecognitive processes; for example, their understandingof rehearsal, chunking, and elaboration strategies toincrease memory (see Siegler & Alibali, 2005).

Differentiation of Factors that Do and Do Not AffectCognitive Performance

The inclusion of several control scenarios furtherelucidate developmental changes in children’s beliefsabout which factors do and do not affect cognitiveperformance. On the no-change scenario, 5- and 6-year-olds (but not 7-year-olds and adults) predictedthat even in the absence of any stated precipitatingfactor, protagonists would generally do better thanthey have in the past on academic tasks. Thisoccurred even though we always included theno-change scenario as the first trial to avoid thepossibility of priming effects (i.e., heightened atten-tion to emotional or physiological states). Moreover,our warm-up questions included training on no-change predictions to ensure that children under-stood this was an acceptable answer.

There are several reasons why younger childrenmay have responded differently to this scenario. First,4- to 6-year-olds often elaborate on story scenarioseven when not prompted by an experimenter (seeLagattuta et al., 1997). Second, because young childrenmay be more vulnerable to demand characteristics of

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tasks or questions when trying to please interviewers(e.g., Bruck & Ceci, 1999), they may have assumedthat the experimenter expected a ‘‘something haschanged’’ response or else she would not haveasked the question (although this does not explainwhy children’s change predictions favored improve-ment and were not at chance). There is also evidencethat age effects for the no-change scenario mayreflect developmental changes in how children under-stand ‘‘ability’’ —in this case, academic or intellectualability. Specifically, consistent with findings fromHeyman and Giles (2004), young children tend toexpect positive traits, such as intelligence, to increaseover both the short (tomorrow) and the long term(when a grown-up), leading them to overgeneralizeexpectations of improved performance. Indeed, ourdata indicate that when explaining predictionsfor the no-change scenario, many children (47%)invokednotions of ability to account for the characters’performance (e.g., ‘‘Because he is smarter and cando it’’).

Children were also more likely than adults topredict that negative changes in a person’s hairstylewould impair their academic performance. This ap-peared to be due to children’s greater tendency toinfer negative emotions due to the change (e.g., ‘‘Shefeels embarrassed about her hair’’). Thus, eventhough the experimenter did not explicitly state thatthe messy hair made the character feel bad, children(reasonably) inferred an emotional change took placeand reasoned about its ultimate cognitive consequen-ces, just as they did for emotion scenarios.

For neutral-change control stories, none of the agegroups predicted significant effects of the color of theprotagonist’s clothing or the classroom rug on aca-demic performance. This suggests that even youngchildren can appropriately refrain from predictingeffects for some types of changes. In contrast to the no-change scenario, the experimenter’s reference toa specific external change (e.g., new rug) may havecurtailed children’s tendency to create new storydetails or to base performance predictions on notionsof ability. Nevertheless, individual-level data (seeTable 2) indicated that although children’s predic-tions of no change were more frequent for neutral-change control stories than for positive or negativeinternal-state stories, many children still predictedpositive or negative effects for these cases. Aswith thevalence-change control stories, explanation data forneutral-change stories suggest that younger childrenoften read more into these stories than expected:Many believed that wearing blue clotheswouldmakethe story character feel ‘‘happy’’ or that the gray rugwould ‘‘bother’’ or ‘‘distract’’ the child fromherwork.

A straightforward possibility is that younger childrenmay actually experience more intense emotionalreactions, interest, or attention to these everydayevents compared to older children and adults, andthey project their own experiences onto the storycharacters.

Limitations and Future Research

We recognize certain limitations of this study thatcould be addressed in future research. First, we choseto focus on caseswhere negative internal stateswouldlikely impair performance and positive internal statesenhance performance. Our data from adults confirmthat this is a common folk theory of emotion.Weknowfrom experimental studies, however, that scientificfindings are not always in line with folk beliefs. Forexample, negative emotions can lead to improvedcognitive performance in some cases, as when theyfacilitate retrieval of mood-congruent memories(Bower, 1981; Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000).

Second, we purposely limited our scenarios tocases where individuals’ current internal states werecaused by prior life events not the school task itself.This raises the question of how children wouldrespond to scenarios in which characters experienceemotions elicited by specific academic tasks—forexample, a child who is ‘‘afraid’’ of math tests.Educational research has shown that such emotionssignificantly predict children’s academic perfor-mance (see Meyer & Turner, 2002; Zambo & Brem,2004). Children’s reasoning about these emotionalexperiences will be an important area for research inboth developmental psychology and the learningsciences.

Third, our scenarios included a school tasks famil-iar to children (all of which were explicitly describedin the scenarios as ‘‘pretty hard’’), and our studyresults showed that school task did not significantlyfactor into children’s performance predictions. Still,future research could examinemore closely children’sbeliefs aboutwhether internal states affect somekindsof academic tasks more than others and also whetherchildren’s understanding of these effects is connectedto their own actual (or self-identified) academicstrengths and weaknesses.

Fourth, our procedure involved asking children tomake performance predictions case by case. Childrendid not make direct comparisons about the relativeenhancing/impairing effects of positive, negative, orneutral events. Future research could examine child-ren’s direct comparisons of the effects of differentkinds of internal states and external factors.

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Finally, the children in our study came fromfamilies with fairly high levels of parental education,which may have affected our results. It will beimportant, both for practice and theory, to validatethese findings in other relevant populations.

Conclusions

Children’s developing theories of mind are heldtogether by rich causal knowledge, allowing them toreason backward and forward about links betweenmind, world, and behavior. The current study offersnew insights by identifying basic developmentalpatterns in children’s reasoning about how internalstates influence cognitive functioning: Young chil-dren understand impairment of thinking perfor-mance due to negative internal states earlier thanthey understand enhancement due to positive inter-nal states, and their knowledge of emotional effects oncognition lags behind their awareness of other impor-tant internal (hunger, fatigue, interest, and effort) andexternal factors (environmental noise). Beyond con-tributing to theories of social cognition, these resultshave practical significance: Changes in emotional andphysiological states are a regular part of children’severyday experience in the school setting. Helpingyoung students acquire the knowledge and skillsnecessary to monitor and regulate them is criticalfor their success.

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Appendix: Examples of Task Stories

Positive Emotion Stories

Happy—memory task. One day Judy is walking toschoolwhen she finds a really cool, special rock on theside of the road. It is blue and gold and shiny. Judyfeels happy. Later that day in school, Judy is stillfeeling happy because of her cool rock. Her teachersays, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time for a rememberinggame. I’m going to show you lots of different picturesin this book, and at the end I want to see how manythings you can remember. It’s pretty hard.’’ Judyusually does okay remembering hard things likethese. How do you think she will do right now, whenshe is feeling happy?

Proud—spatial problem-solving task. One morningMax’s friend Joey gives him a very nice card. It says,‘‘DearMax, you are the best friend in thewholeworld.From Joey.’’ Max feels proud. Later that day in school,Max is still feeling proud because of Joey’s nice card.His teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time tomake special paper airplanes. You have to follow a lotof directions to do it just right. It’s pretty hard.’’ Max

usually does okay following hard directions likethese. How do you think he will do right now, whenhe is feeling proud?

Negative Emotion Stories

Sad—language task. One day Lisa is walking toschool when her favorite teddy bear falls out of herbackpack and gets lost forever. Lisa feels sad. Laterthat day in school, Lisa is still feeling sad because ofher lost teddy bear. Her teacher says, ‘‘OK, every-one, now it’s time to play a word game. I want tosee how many different words you can think ofthat start with X, Y, or Z. It’s pretty hard.’’ Lisausually does okay on hard word games like these.How do you think she will do right now, when sheis feeling sad?

Mad—reading task. One morning Sam is playingoutside in the sandbox before school. He buildsa big sandcastle. Then some mean kids come up tohim and jump all over his sandcastle until it is allruined. Sam feels mad. Later that day in school,Sam is still feeling mad because of his ruinedsandcastle. His teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, nowit’s time for reading. We are going to read a story inour new reading books. It’s pretty hard.’’ Samusually does okay reading hard stories like these.How do you think he will do right now, when he isfeeling mad?

Positive Physiological State Stories

Wide awake—spelling task. One night Becky goesto bed extra early, before her regular bedtime. Shehas a nice long sleep and gets lots of rest. In themorning when Becky gets up, she feels wide awake.Later that day in school, Becky is still feeling wideawake because of her long sleep. Her teacher says,‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time for a spelling test. I’llsay the words and you write down how they arespelled. They’re pretty hard.’’ Becky usually doesokay on hard spelling tests like these. How do youthink she will do right now, when she is feelingwide awake?

Full and Healthy—spatial problem-solving task. Onemorning before school Robert eats an extra big andhealthy breakfast with yummy cereal, toast, eggs,orange juice, and an apple. After breakfast, Robertfeels full and healthy. Later that day in school,Robert is still feeling full and healthy because of hisbig, healthy breakfast. His teacher says, ‘‘OK, every-one, now it’s time to make special paper airplanes.You have to follow a lot of directions to do it just

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right. It’s pretty hard.’’ Robert usually does okayfollowing hard directions like these. How do youthink he will do right now, when he is feeling fulland healthy?

Negative Physiological State Stories

Tired—language task. One night Hannah stays uplate watching TV with her parents. She goes to bedway past her regular bedtime and she only gets tosleep a very short time. In the morning when shegets up, Hannah feels tired. Later that day inschool, Hannah is still feeling tired because ofstaying up late. Her teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone,now it’s time to play a word game. I want to seehow many different words you can think of thatstart with X, Y, or Z. It’s pretty hard.’’ Hannahusually does okay on hard word games like these.How do you think she will do right now, when sheis feeling tired?

Hungry—science task. One morning before schoolJohn doesn’t have any time to eat breakfast—hedoesn’t even drink any milk or juice before he goesout the door. When John gets to school he feelshungry. Later that day in school, John is still feelinghungry because of not eating breakfast. His teachersays, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time for a sciencelesson. We are going to learn lots of new thingsabout the solar system. It’s pretty hard.’’ Johnusually does okay learning hard stuff like this.How do you think he will do right now, when he’sfeeling hungry?

Noisy –Quiet Stories

Noisy room—spelling task. One day when Kevingets to school, there are some workers up on top ofthe school, fixing the roof. The workers are bangingwith their hammers right above Kevin’s classroom—-bang, bang, bang! It is noisy in Kevin’s classroom.Later that day in school, it is still noisy in Kevin’sclassroombecause of theworkers banging on the roof.His teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time fora spelling test. I’ll say the words and you write downhow they are spelled. They’re pretty hard.’’ Kevinusually does okay on hard spelling tests like these.How do you think he will do right now, when it’snoisy in his classroom?

Quiet room—memory task. One day when Ryangets to school, they are having an ‘‘extra-quiet day’’in Ryan’s classroom. That means everyone is doingtheir work extra quietly and nobody is talking ormaking any noise. It is quiet in Ryan’s classroom.

Later that day in school, it is still quiet in Ryan’sclassroom because of their ‘‘quiet day.’’ His teachersays, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time for a remem-bering game. I’m going to show you lots of dif-ferent pictures in this book, and at the end I wantto see how many things you can remember. It’spretty hard.’’ Ryan usually does okay remem-bering hard things like these. How do you think hewill do right now, when it’s extra quiet in hisclassroom?

Valence-Change Control Stories

Nice hair—math task. One day Kate is gettingready for school. She sees her blue hair bows sittingon her dresser and she decides to wear them toschool. She puts the bows in her hair. Her hairlooks nice. Later that day in school, Kate’s hair isstill looking nice because of her hair bows. Herteacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’s time to dosome math problems. You have to add, subtract,and multiply. They’re pretty hard.’’ Kate usuallydoes okay on hard math problems like these. Howdo you think she will do right now, when her hairis looking nice?

Messy hair—reading task. One morning beforeschool Susan is playing on the playground with herfriends. It is very windy outside, and the wind blowsSusan’s hair all around. When she goes inside, Sus-an’s hair looksmessy. Later that day in school, Susan’shair is still looking messy because of the windblowing it. Her teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, nowit’s time for reading. We are going to read a story inour new reading books. It’s pretty hard.’’ Susanusually does okay reading hard stories like these.How do you think she will do right now, when herhair is looking messy?

Neutral-Change Control Stories

Different rug—science task. One day when Alliegets to school, there is a new rug in her classroom.The new rug is gray. It covers the whole floor of theclassroom. The floor looks all gray. Later that day inschool, the floor is still looking gray because of thenew rug. Her teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, now it’stime for a science lesson. We are going to learn lots ofnew things about the solar system. It’s pretty hard.’’Allie usually does okay learning hard stuff like this.How do you think she will do right now, when thefloor is gray?

Different clothing—math task. One day, David isgetting ready for school. He sees his blue shirt and

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pants in the closet and he decides to wear them toschool. He gets dressed. He looks all blue. Later thatday in school, David is still looking all blue because ofhis blue clothes.His teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone, nowit’s time to do some math problems. You have to add,subtract, and multiply. They’re pretty hard.’’ Davidusually does okay on hard math problems like these.How do you think he will do right now, when hisclothes are blue?

No-Change Control Story (Baseline)

Timgoes to school everyday.OnedaywhenTim is atschool, his teacher says, ‘‘OK, everyone,nowit’s time fora remembering game. I’m going to show you lots ofdifferent pictures in this book, and at the end I want tosee how many things you can remember. It’s prettyhard.’’ Timusually does okay remembering hard thingslike these. How do you think he will do right now?

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Journal: Child Development

Article : cdev_1249

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Query Remark

1 Please note that the year ‘‘2000’’ in the reference citation ‘‘Alaimo et al. (2001)’’has been changed to ‘‘2001’’ as per the list. Please check.

2 Please note that the spelling of the author name ‘‘Frederickson’’ and ‘‘Fielder’’ inreference citations ‘‘Frederickson (2001)’’ and ‘‘Bless and Fiedler (1995)’’ havebeen changed to ‘‘Fredrickson’’ and ‘‘Fiedler,’’ respectively, as per the list. Pleasecheck.

3 Please define ‘‘HSD’’ in the sentence ‘‘For most analyses . . .’’

4 Please provide the serial number for the reference ‘‘Flavell et al. (1995b).’’

5 Please provide the page range for the reference ‘‘Harter and Whitesell (1989).’’

6 Please provide the city name for the reference ‘‘Siegler and Alibali (2005).’’