The Association of Children’s Locus of Control Orientation and Emotion Recognition Abilities at 8 Years of Age and Teachers’ Ratings of Their Personal and Social Difficulties at 10 Years

The purpose of the present study was to see if emotion recognition skill and locus of control in 8-year-old children predicted teacher rated Goodman Strengths and Difficulties (SDQ, Goodman in J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 40:1337–1345, 2001) 2 years later. Children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC; Golding in Eur J Endocrinol 151:U119–U123, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1530/eje.0.151U119) completed emotion recognition tests of child facial expressions and voices and a child locus of control scale when they were 8 years of age. Later at age 10, as part of ALSPAC’s on-going-assessment of children’s personal and social lives, teachers completed the SDQ. Based on past research and developmental theory (e.g., Nowicki and Duke in J Nonverbal Behav 18:9–35, 1994; Thomas et al. in Dev Sci 10(5):547–558, 2007) it was predicted and found that children who made more recognition errors, were more external, and male at age 8 had a greater number of teacher-rated psychological/behavioral difficulties at age 10 than those who made fewer errors, were internal, and female. Implications of the findings for children’s personal and social adjustment were discussed.