8:45 a.m., Dec. 9, 2008----People read others' emotions each day. Without consciously thinking about it, you know when a friend is angry or sad, happy or surprised by the look on her face. Some children cannot make this distinction. And University of Delaware psychology professor Carroll Izard says if someone does not intervene and teach them, they can become aggressive.

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Izard, Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology, is studying the effects of an intervention program he devised. A $2.7 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health is supporting his five-year study.

The project includes more than 250 children enrolled in Head Start's preschool program in Wilmington. The children, ages 3 to 5, are mostly minorities living in low-income households.

“They hear sirens more often than they hear songs some evenings,” Izard said. “It's a tough way to grow up.”

Izard believes the stresses associated with living in tough neighborhoods, often with a single parent, can lead children to become either aggressive or depressed because they do not learn to read facial expressions.

“Some children show signs of becoming depressed. Believe it or not even as early as 3, 4 years of age you can actually diagnose depression,” he said.

A previous survey of Wilmington Head Start children found approximately 20 percent of the preschoolers were already at the point where they needed attention from special services for either aggression or depression.

Timid or shy kids tend toward depression, while bold kids can take on aggressive responses. Say for instance, two children both want the same toy. One child clearly shows anger on his face, but the other doesn't know what that means.

“If they can't read the angry face, they might get into a scrap,” Izard said.

If aggression becomes a pattern, it can develop into a conduct disorder.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says children with this diagnosis have great difficulty following rules and behaving in a socially acceptable way. Izard says it is very difficult to cure if children are not treated by early adolescence.

Izard's intervention program is a curriculum taught by the children's teachers. It includes hand puppets and kid-friendly pictures that show what it looks like when someone is happy, sad, angry, and a range of other emotions. The next stage involves teaching parents how to reinforce the lessons at home.

The NIMH grant allows Izard and his team of three staffers, five graduate students and 40 undergraduates to monitor the preschoolers' progress. They gauge the program's effectiveness by testing the children at various times, sending independent observers in to the classrooms, and will follow up for three years after the children graduate from Head Start.

“Our wish is that it will just become a part of them, part of their personality, part of their social functioning,” Izard said.

Article by Andrea Boyle