Effects of Emotional Valence and Concreteness on Children’s Recognition Memory

Abstract

There are considerable gaps in our knowledge of how children develop abstract language. In this paper, we tested the Affective Embodiment Account, which proposes that emotional information is more essential for abstract than concrete conceptual development. We tested the recognition memory of 7- and 8-year-old children, as well as a group of adults, for abstract and concrete words which differed categorically in valence (negative, neutral, and positive). Word valence significantly interacted with concreteness in hit rates of both children and adults, such that effects of valence were only found in memory for abstract words. The pattern of valence effects differed for children and adults: children remembered negative words more accurately than neutral and positive words (a negativity effect), whereas adults remembered negative and positive words more accurately than neutral words (a negativity effect and a positivity effect). In addition, signal detection analysis revealed that children were better able to discriminate negative than positive words, regardless of concreteness. The findings suggest that the memory accuracy of 7- and 8-year-old children is influenced by emotional information, particularly for abstract words. The results are in agreement with the Affective Embodiment Account and with multimodal accounts of children’s lexical development.

Development of Abstract Word Knowledge

“…Finally, Kim et al (2020) tested a different cognitive process, children’s recognition memory, for the interaction of valence and concreteness. They presented 7- to 8-year-old children with spoken word stimuli that varied on both valence and concreteness.…”

Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences

“…In research on language use, cutting-edge approaches investigate dialogue as a form of joint action [30,31], and new tools allow researchers to explore the interactional dynamics underlying language use [32][33][34][35]. Studies show that interaction facilitates abstract thought and problem-solving [6,36,37] and reveal that emotions [38][39][40][41][42] and social interaction [43][44][45] are paramount for abstract concept acquisition and use.…”

Abstract concepts and emotion: cross-linguistic evidence and arguments against affective embodiment

“…In a similar vein, Lund et al [51] conducted a processing study with three age groups between 5 and 7 years, also finding that the middle age group (here 6year-olds) showed an effect of emotional valence that was specific to abstract concepts, but only for positive not negative valence. Finally, Kim et al [72] showed that for recognition memory in 7-8-year-old children, valence interacted with abstract concepts, but only for negative words. These acquisition studies are generally interpreted as supporting the idea of emotional grounding, although the fact that only partial effects were obtained (i.e.…”

“…[17] and Kim et al . [72] offer plausible post hoc explanations why the children in the respective studies showed only partial effects. However, in the case of Ponari et al [17], it was positive valence that stood out; in the case of Kim et al .…”