ABSTRACT
Despite the extraordinary presence of emotions in the lives of children, and despite our usual confidence in identifying children's emotions in social interaction, research-based knowledge of children's emotions is limited. Uncertainties about the construct of emotion and difficulties in measuring emotions have dampened efforts in empirical research. In particular, developmental researchers have been slow to give children's moods and emotions the benefit of the kinds of efforts that have given theory and substance to research on other aspects of child behavior and development. The empiricists of the 1930s, Katherine Bridges (1932), Florence Goodenough (1931), Arthur Jersild and Frances Holmes (1935), Mary Cover Jones (1924) provide us still with our classic studies of children's emotions.
