J. Child Psyc/ul. PsycUa Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 811-824. 1985. 0021-9630/85 13.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press Ltd. © 1985 Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONCEPTS OF SIMULTANEITY IN CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF EMOTIONS NADJA REISSLAND Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford Abstract—The development of children's understanding of simultaneously occurring emotions was investigated. A developmental progression was found in their giving examples of ambivalent situations (e.g. characterised by both happiness and anger); and in their descriptions of situations. The youngest children (mean age = 5.8) gave as examples of ambivalence two unrelated events associated with different emotions. At the next stage children (mean age « 7.0) were able to connect sequentially two events. At a third stage (mean age - 10.1) the children were able to conceive of situations in which two emotions of opposite valence occurred simultaneously. Keywords: Simultaneity, ambivalence, emotions, cognition INTRODUCTION RECENT research among developmental psychologists has focused on children's understanding of the relation between different emotions. Harter (1979) has investi- gated the relation between being happy and being 'mad', 'sad', and scared. Selman (1980) questioned children concerning their knowledge of the conflict between the good feeling of friendship and the bad feeling of an event or action which troubled that friendship. Carroll (1981), Tharinger (1981), Nannis (1983) and Harris (in press) have examined children's understanding of situations characterised by happiness and sadness. Common to much of this research has been the observation that at a certain age children are able to comprehend ambivalent situations, that is to say, situations characterised by simultaneously occurring emotions of opposite valence. The ability to comprehend such situations implies that the children have a concept of simultaneity. The development of this concept with reference to emotions has been recently investigated by Harter and Buddin (1983) and by Harris (in press). Harter and Buddin elicted from children examples of situations, characterised by two different emotions and they analysed these examples with reference to the valence of each emotion and the person, or 'target', to whom the emotion was directed. A develop- mental progression was found in which the children were first able to relate two simultaneously occurring emotions of the same valence and target (mean ages = 6.5 years) and then two emotions of the same valence but different target (mean age = 8.0 years). It was not until 10.5 years of age that the subjects were able to Requests for reprints to: Nadja Reissland, Department of Experimental Psychology, South Parks Road, Oxford, U.K. Accepted manuscript received 12 October 1984 811