Let’s Talk About Emotions: the Development of Children’s Emotion Vocabulary from 4 to 11 Years of Age

Große, Gerlind; Streubel, Berit; Saalbach, Henrik

doi:10.1007/s42761-021-00040-2

Cited by 33 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…One other looming measurement issue concerns how to measure emotion differentiation in very young populations (and some adult populations) who lack emotion words (see also Shablack and Lindquist, 2019). Emotion vocabulary is constrained to simple words in very young children, and most emotion words are learned across the first ∼10 years of life (Baron- Cohen et al, 2010;Nook et al, 2020;Grosse et al, 2021). Researchers have developed creative designs to test emotion perception in very young children, including pre-verbal infants (e.g., looking time, children's behavioral responses to maternal facial expressions, and sorting paradigms; Sorce et al, 1985;Widen and Russell, 2008;Wu et al, 2017;Ogren and Johnson, 2020b).…”

Section: Gaining Consensus On What We're Measuring and How To Measure Itmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

Nook

2021

Front. Psychol.

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A growing body of research identifies emotion differentiation—the ability to specifically identify one’s emotions—as a key skill for well-being. High emotion differentiation is associated with healthier and more effective regulation of one’s emotions, and low emotion differentiation has been documented in several forms of psychopathology. However, the lion’s share of this research has focused on adult samples, even though approximately 50% of mental disorders onset before age 18. This review curates what we know about the development of emotion differentiation and its implications for youth mental health. I first review published studies investigating how emotion differentiation develops across childhood and adolescence, as well as studies testing relations between emotion differentiation and mental health in youth samples. Emerging evidence suggests that emotion differentiation actually falls across childhood and adolescence, a counterintuitive pattern that merits further investigation. Additionally, several studies find relations between emotion differentiation and youth mental health, but some instability in results emerged. I then identify open questions that limit our current understanding of emotion differentiation, including (i) lack of clarity as to the valid measurement of emotion differentiation, (ii) potential third variables that could explain relations between emotion differentiation and mental-health (e.g., mean negative affect, IQ, personality, and circularity with outcomes), and (iii) lack of clear mechanistic models regarding the development of emotion differentiation and how it facilitates well-being. I conclude with a discussion of future directions that can address open questions and work toward interventions that treat (or even prevent) psychopathology.

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Section: Gaining Consensus On What We're Measuring and How To Measure Itmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

Nook

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Finally, more objective estimations of the size and characteristics of the EM vocabulary were provided by testing children's ability to label faces, stories or vignettes describing feelings (Grosse et al, 2021;Streubel et al, 2020;Widen & Russell, 2003, 2008, listing as many emotion words as they knew (Beck et al, 2012) or asking definitions for EM words (Nook et al, 2020). Overall, these studies show that most children between 28 and 36 months have already learnt words describing feelings such as funny, love or scared (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982;Nook et al, 2017;Ridgeway et al, 1985;Widen & Russell, 2003, 2008, and that EM vocabularies grow quickly at ages 4-11 (Baron-Cohen et al, 2010;Grosse et al, 2021;Li & Yu, 2015;Nook et al, 2020;Streubel et al, 2020). Also, EM words denoting positive affective states are learnt earlier in life compared to those expressing negative feelings (Baron-Cohen et al, 2010;Li & Yu, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The acquisition of emotion-laden words from childhood to adolescence

et al. 2022

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Studies investigating how children acquire emotional vocabularies have mainly focused on words that describe feelings or affective states (emotion-label words, e.g., joy) trough subjective assessments of the children’s lexicon reported by their parents or teachers. In the current cross-sectional study, we objectively examined the age of acquisition of words that relate to emotions without explicitly referring to affective states (emotion-laden words, e.g., cake, tomb, rainbow) using a picture naming task. Three hundred and sixty participants belonging to 18 age groups from preschool to adolescence overtly named line drawings corresponding to positive, negative, and neutral concrete nouns. The results of regression and mixed model analyses indicated that positive emotion-laden words are learnt earlier in life. This effect was independent of the contribution of other lexical and semantic factors (familiarity, word frequency, concreteness, word length). It is proposed that the prioritized acquisition of positive emotion-laden words might be the consequence of the communicative style and contextual factors associated with the interaction between children and caregivers. We also discuss the implications of our findings for proposals that highlight the role of language in emotion perception and understanding.

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“…Emotional vocabulary has been shown to increase gradually in amount and differentiation with age through childhood and adolescence toward adulthood ( Grosse et al, 2021 ), and facial expression processing are known to develop with age based on neurobiological maturation and socialization, with a female advantage ( McClure, 2000 ). This trajectory is similar to the increase in general vocabulary, which is considered an aspect of general cognitive development, also increasing with age and showing gender differences ( Doost et al, 1999 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication and Emotional Vocabulary; Relevance for Mental Health Among School-Age Youths

Rimehaug

Kårstad

2022

Front. Psychol.

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BackgroundThe association between language and mental health may be connected to several aspects of language. Based on the known associations, emotional vocabulary could be an important contribution to mental health and act as a risk, protective or resilience factor for mental health in general. As a preliminary test of this hypothesis, an assessment of emotional vocabulary was constructed and used among youths in school age. Cross-sectional associations and prediction models with parent-reported youth mental health as outcome were examined for emotional vocabulary as well as general vocabulary, non-verbal problem solving and social communication, controlled for age, gender and subsamples.ResultsEmotional vocabulary, general vocabulary and non-verbal problem solving were directly associated with each other and similarly associated with age and gender. However, they were not significantly associated with social communication skills or mental health in the expected direction. Only social communication skills showed significant negative associations with behavioral mental health problems, suggesting these skills to be potential resources related to mental health.ImplicationFuture research should investigate whether behavioral problems may be prevented or improved by developing better social communication skills among community school-age youths. However, our results suggest that merely expanding emotional vocabulary is not likely to produce such effects unless this is integrated with improving social communication.

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Let’s Talk About Emotions: the Development of Children’s Emotion Vocabulary from 4 to 11 Years of Age

Cited by 33 publications

References 46 publications

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

The acquisition of emotion-laden words from childhood to adolescence

Communication and Emotional Vocabulary; Relevance for Mental Health Among School-Age Youths

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