Children’s understanding, expression, control, and recognition of emotions are all key skills that enhance the likelihood of experiencing successful social interactions. The purpose of this research topic is to address the issue of how children learn and develop their ability to understand their own emotional expressions and those of others. Within this topic, there are several interesting issues that have been debated for years in the developmental psychology field, among which are:
- Children´s ability to control the expression of their emotions.
- Children’s understanding that the expression of emotions can be controlled and the consequences that it may have in the beliefs of other people.
- Children’s understanding of the display rules, or the rules that regulate which emotions should or shouldn’t be expressed in different social situations.
- How children’s implicit understanding of emotional expression becomes explicit, and how this explicit knowledge might change the regulation of the emotional expression.
- Developmental and cultural differences in the understanding of emotional expressions.
- Individual differences in the understanding of emotional expressions.
- Children’s understanding of pretend emotions.

The aim of the present research topic is to pull together evidence from research which address the questions above in order to debate and advance our knowledge about how children become aware of the meaning of the emotional expressions and the role that this understanding has in their socialization process.
We encourage contributions in two formats: a) original empirical research manuscripts, which may use different paradigms, and b) review papers of the existing literature trying to integrate results from different investigations and perspectives.

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.