ABSTRACT
In reviewing Susan Harter's very interesting and evolving program of research, several issues arose. My first concern is a familiar one. How can one take seriously what adults, let alone children, say on request about their emotional lives? It is a realm that is too personal, too conflict laden, and too abstract for people, especially children, to deal with effectively when they are asked direct questions by anyone, especially a strange adult. I am not saying that no child is capable of giving very revealing and theoretically significant information in this sphere—but rather that I have doubts about the validity of an aggregate of data obtained by systematically questioning a sample of children along these lines. It is not without interest to learn how children respond to such tasks even if they are not answering the question fully or meaningfully. Data bearing on developmental changes in how children deal with their confusion or express their ignorance are sometimes quite revealing, but in such cases we need to recognize their responses for what they are.
