Past research has demonstrated that children understand distinct emotion concepts and can accurately recognize facial expressions of distinct emotions by a young age, but few studies have assessed the age at which children develop the ability to recognize bodily expressions of distinct emotions. The current pre-registered research is the largest study to date (N = 552) examining the age at which children begin to recognize static bodily expressions of three negative emotions: anger, fear, and sadness. Our findings suggest that bodily expressions of sadness are recognized at rates consistently above chance by the age of 3-years, fear around the age of 4- to 5-years, and anger between the ages of 6- and 8-years. Recognition of all three expressions increased with age. The current research is the first to address this question using an entirely between-subjects design, allowing us to rule out the possibility that accurate recognition occurred as a result of a process of elimination or memory. Together, these findings suggest that children can reliably identify distinct negative emotions from bodily expressions, and this ability varies by age and the specific emotion being identified.

过去的研究表明，儿童在很小的时候就理解不同的情绪概念，并且可以准确地识别不同情绪的面部表情，但很少有研究评估儿童识别不同情绪的身体表达能力的年龄。目前的预注册研究是迄今为止规模最大的研究（N = 552）检查儿童开始识别三种负面情绪的静态身体表达的年龄：愤怒、恐惧和悲伤。我们的研究结果表明，悲伤的身体表达在 3 岁、4 到 5 岁左右的恐惧和 6 到 8 岁之间的愤怒的识别率始终高于偶然。对所有三种表达的识别都随着年龄的增长而增加。目前的研究是第一个使用完全被试间设计来解决这个问题的研究，这使我们能够排除由于消除或记忆过程而发生准确识别的可能性。总之，这些发现表明，儿童可以从身体表情中可靠地识别出明显的负面情绪，这种能力因年龄和所识别的特定情绪而异。