| Summary: | Parents' abilities to decode their children's nonverbal expressions of four affects (happiness, sadness, fear, and anger) were contrasted with the decoding abilities of a matched group of nonparents. No differences were found between parents' and nonparents' decoding abilities. However, decoding abilities were found to vary as a function of the sex of the encoding child and, the type of affect expressed. Female children were found to be more accurate encoders of spontaneous affective expressions than male children. Of the four affects studied, communication accuracy was found to be highest for expressions of sadness and lowest for expressions of anger. Several hypotheses, including the differential effect of socialized display rules on male and female children, are discussed to explain the results.
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