Emotional Outbursts and Their Effects on Peer Relations in the Preschool Classroom

Abstract

Emotions and emotion regulation play a role in a child’s interactions with their peers. This study uses observations collected in two preschool classrooms to address the questions of what causes emotional outbursts and how emotional outbursts affect the children involved. In this study, an emotional outburst is defined as an occurrence in which the child is making loud noises and having a physical reaction to an event that has just occurred. Participants were 22 children from the ages of three to five years old. Observational data were collected, and analyzed through categorization and interpretation, and results from this study suggest that there are many common causes of emotional outbursts in the children observed. The findings do not indicate obvious effects of emotional outbursts on children in the vicinity of the outburst