Emotion Language Development in Young Children

Undergraduates: Anika Khan, Holly Shablack Kristen Lindquist, Misha Becker

Faculty Advisor: Kristen Lindquist
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

---

Emotions are a part of everyday life however, how emotion language is understood and developed by children is an under researched area. According to linguistic research, syntactical bootstrapping is a domineering factor in a child¿¿¿s concept learning. Developmental research points to the importance of physical context in concept learning. From this stemmed two studies investigating the role of syntax and context in children¿¿¿s (3-5) ability to understand a novel word to be an emotion. Study 1, (N=114) children watched videos of puppets presenting a novel ¿¿¿alien¿¿¿ word in one of three syntactical structures (is, feels and feels about). After the video children completed a picture pointing task in which they could choose one of three images, either a state of being (cold), an action (running) or an emotion (surprised) to answer what the alien word meant. In study 2, (N=113) context was included in conjunction with the different syntactical structures. Children watched 7 videos, in each video an alien portrayed an emotional scenario. After each video the child again completed the same picture pointing task as in study 1. Preliminary results of a repeated measures ANOVA reveals significant 3-way interactions between age, syntactic structure and image choice, F(8, 414) = 2.07, p=.04, and between study, age, and image choice, F(4, 414) = 2.69, p=.03, suggest that emotion images are chosen consistently with age, syntactic structure, and that physical context increases emotion choices.