The expressive and communicative functions of preschool children's smiles in an achievement-situation

Two studies examined how different social contexts determine whether preschoolers' smiles in an achievement-game serve an expressive function indicating success versus failure experiences and/or a communicative function. Facial behavior was coded with the Facial Action Coding System. Unexpectedly, in Study 1 children (N=19) smiled more often after failure than after success. Study 2 investigated the influence of face-to-face contact with the experimenter on preschoolers' smiles (N=20). However, there were no differences between success and failure, but with face-to-face contact subjects exhibited more smiles than without. Features of the social situation that are supposed to determine the predominance of the communicative or expressive function of a smile are discussed.We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Detlef Friedrich and Katja Johann in the data collection and Signe Preuschoft in coding and analyzing the data.