Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:34:13.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Emotion word comprehension in children aged 4–7 years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2019

Christelle Declercq Open the ORCID record for Christelle Declercq [Opens in a new window] ,
Pauline Marlé  and
Régis Pochon
Christelle Declercq*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société) EA6291, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
Pauline Marlé
Affiliation:
Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société) EA6291, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
Régis Pochon
Affiliation:
Laboratoire C2S (Cognition, Santé, Société) EA6291, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
*
Author for correspondence: Christelle Declercq, Email: christelle.declercq@univ-reims.fr
Get access

Abstract

Despite its importance for furthering social relationships, the development of the emotional lexicon has seldom been studied. Recent research suggests that during childhood, emotion words are acquired less rapidly than concrete words, but more rapidly than abstract words. The present study directly compared the comprehension of emotion words with the comprehension of concrete and abstract words in children aged 4–7 years. Children were shown 48 sets of four pictures and for each set had to point to the picture corresponding to a word that had just been pronounced. Words referred to concrete (16), abstract (16), or emotional (16) concepts. Results showed that concrete words were better understood than either emotion or abstract words, and emotion words were better understood than abstract ones. This finding emphasises the importance of the emotional lexicon in lexical development, and suggests that emotion word comprehension should be enhanced through regular training. This would increase children’s emotional knowledge, improve their communication skills, and promote their socialisation.

Keywords

emotional knowledgemeaningabstract wordsconcrete wordsdevelopment
Type
Articles
Information
The Educational and Developmental Psychologist , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 82 - 87
Copyright
© Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The online version of this article has been updated since original publication. A notice detailing the changes has also been published.

References

Altarriba, J., & Bauer, L.M. (2004). The distinctiveness of emotion concepts: A comparison between emotion, abstract, and concrete. The American Journal of Psychology, 117, 389–410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Altarriba, J., Bauer, L.M., & Benvenuto, C. (1999). Concreteness, context availability, and image ability ratings and word associations for abstract, concrete, and emotion words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 31, 578–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ambridge, B., & Rowland, C.F. (2013). Experimental methods in studying child language acquisition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 4, 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1215 Google ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S., Golan, O., Wheelwright, S., Granader, Y., & Hill, J. (2010). Emotion word comprehension from 4 to 16 years old: A developmental survey. Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience, 2, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnevo.2010.00109 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bassano, D. (2005). Production naturelle précoce et acquisition du langage. Lidil, 31, 14.Google Scholar
Borghi, A.M., Binkofski, F., Castelfranchi, C., Cimatti, F., Scorolli, C., & Tummolini, L. (2017). The challenge of abstract concepts. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 263–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, J.M., & Paivio, A. (2004). Extensions of the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan (1968) norms. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 36, 371–383.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dale, P.S., Bates, E., Reznick, J.S., & Morisset, C. (1989). The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at twenty months. Journal of Child Language, 16, 239–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Della Rosa, P.A., Catricalà, E., Vigliocco, G., & Cappa, S.F. (2010). Beyond the abstract-concrete dichotomy: Mode of acquistion, concreteness, imageability, familiarity, age of acquistion, context availability and abstractness norms for a set of 417 Italian words. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 1042–1048.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denham, S.A. (2007). Dealing with feelings: How children negotiate the worlds of emotions and social relationships. Cognition, Brain, Behavior, 11, 1–48.Google Scholar
Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, D. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Dunn, L.M., & Dunn, D.M. (2007). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed.). Circle Pines: American Guidance Service.Google Scholar
Dunn, L.M., Thériault-Whalen, C.M., & Dunn, D. (1993). Échelle de vocabulaire en images Peabody (EVIP) [Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised]. Toronto, ON: Psycan.Google Scholar
Elias, M.J., Zins, J.E., & Weissberg, R.P. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.Google Scholar
Fehr, B., & Russell, J.A. (1984). Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 464–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Bates, E., Dale, P., Goodman, J., Reznick, J.S., & Thal, D. (2015). Measuring variability in early child language: Don’t shoot the messenger. Child Development, 71, 323–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fliessbach, K., Weis, S., Klaver, P., Elger, C.E., & Weber, B. (2006). The effect of word concreteness on recognition memory. NeuroImage, 32, 1413–1421.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gagnon, M., Gosselin, P., Buhs, I.H. der, Larocque, K., & Milliard, K. (2010). Children’s recognition and discrimination of fear and disgust facial expressions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34, 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadley, E.B., Dickinson, D.K., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Nesbitt, K.T. (2016). Examining the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge depth among preschool students. Reading Research Quarterly, 51, 181–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibernon, L., Touchet, C., & Pochon, R. (2018). Emotion recognition as a real strength in Williams syndrome: Evidence from a dynamic nonverbal task. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, C.E., Schultz, D., Fine, S.E., Youngstrom, E., & Ackerman, B.P. (2000). Temperament, cognitive ability, emotion knowledge, and adaptive social behavior. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 19, 305–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, C., Fine, S., Schultz, D., Mostow, A., Ackerman, B., & Youngstrom, E. (2001). Emotion knowledge as a predictor of social behavior and academic competence in children at risk. Psychological Science, 12, 18–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kousta, S.-T., Vinson, D.P., & Vigliocco, G. (2009). Emotion words, regardless of polarity, have a processing advantage over neutral words. Cognition, 112, 473–481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Law, J., & Roy, P. (2008). Parental report of infant language skills : A review of the development and application of the Communicative Development Inventories. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 13, 198–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lété, B., Sprenger-Charolles, L., & Colé, P. (2004). MANULEX: A grade-level lexical database from French elementary school readers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156–166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, Y., & Yu, D. (2015). Development of emotion word comprehension in Chinese children from 2 to 13 years old : Relationships with valence and empathy. PLoS One, 10, 1–18.Google ScholarPubMed
Lindquist, K.A., Barrett, L.F., Bliss-Moreau, E., & Russell, J.A. (2006). Language and the perception of emotion. Emotion, 6, 125–138.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A., & Öhman, A. (1998). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces – KDEF [CD ROM]. Solna, Sweden: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.Google Scholar
Maurer, M., Brackett, M.A., & Plain, F. (2004). Emotional literacy in the middle school: A 6-step program to promote social emotional and academic learning. Port Chester, NY: National Professional Resources/Dude Publishing.Google Scholar
McRae, K., & Jones, M. (2013). Semantic memory. In Reisberg, D. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive psychology (pp. 232–239). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paivio, A., & Yuille, J.C. (1966). Word abstractness and meaningfulness, and paired-associate learning in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 4, 81–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pons, F., Lawson, J., Harris, P.L., & de Rosnay, M. (2003). Individual differences in children’s emotion understanding: Effects of age and language. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 44, 347–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raven, J.C., Court, J.H., & Raven, J. (1998). Progressive matrices couleur/Colored progressive matrices. Paris: Les Editions du Centre de Psychologie Appliquée.Google Scholar
Ridgeway, D., Waters, E., & Kuczaj, S.A. (1985). Acquisition of emotion-descriptive language : Receptive and productive vocabulary norms for ages 18 months to 6 years. Developmental Psychology, 21, 901–908.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, J.A., & Widen, S.C. (2002a). A label superiority effect in children’s categorization of facial expressions. Social Development, 11, 30–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, J.A., & Widen, S.C. (2002b). Words versus faces in evoking preschool children’s knowledge of the causes of emotions. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 97–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saarni, C. (1999). The development of emotional competence. New York, NY: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Saarni, C. (2007). The development of emotional competence: Pathways for helping children to become emotionally intelligent. In Bar-On, R., Maree, J.G., & Elias, M.J. (Eds.), Educating people to be emotionally intelligent (pp. 15–35). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Salmon, K., Evans, I.M., Moskowitz, S., Grouden, M., Parkes, F., & Miller, E. (2013). The components of young children’s emotion knowledge: Which are enhanced by adult emotion talk? Social Development, 22, 94–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwanenflugel, P.J. (1991). Why are abstract concepts hard to understand? In Schwanenflugel, P.J. (Ed.), The psychology of word meanings (pp. 223–250). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Schwanenflugel, P.J., & Akin, C.E. (1994). Developmental trends in lexical decisions for abstract and concrete words. Reading Research Quarterly, 29, 250–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwanenflugel, P.J., Akin, C., & Luh, W.-M. (1992). Context availability and the recall of abstract and concrete words. Memory and Cognition, 20, 96–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwanenflugel, P.J., Harnishfeger, K., & Stowe, R. (1988). Context availability and lexical decisions for abstract and concrete words. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 499–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trentacosta, C.J., & Fine, S.E. (2010). Emotion knowledge, social competence, and behavior oroblems in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analytic review. Social Development, 19, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vigliocco, G., Meteyard, L., Andrews, M., & Kousta, S. (2009). Toward a theory of semantic representation. Language and Cognition, 1–2, 219–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wauters, L.N., Tellings, A., Van Bon, W.H.J., & Van Haaften, A.W. (2003). Mode of acquisition of word meanings: The viability of a theoretical construct. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 385–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Widen, S.C. (2013). Children’s interpretation of facial expressions: The long path from valence-based to specific discrete categories: Emotion Review 5, 72–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Widen, S.C., & Russell, J.A. (2008). Children acquire emotion categories gradually. Cognitive Development, 23, 291–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Widen, S.C., & Russell, J.A. (2010). Children’s scripts for social emotions: Causes and consequences are more central than are facial expressions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 28, 565–581.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Widen, S.C., & Russell, J.A. (2011). In building a script for an emotion, do preschoolers add its cause before its behavior consequence? Social Development, 20, 471–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuille, J.C., & Paivio, A. (1969). Abstractness and recall of connected discourse. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 82, 467–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar