Talking with Feeling: Integrating Affective and Linguistic Expression in Early Language Development

Abstract

The purpose of the longitudinal study reported here was to determine the developmental relation between the two systems of expression available to the young child in the period of early language learning: affect and speech. Two achievements in language were identified for a group of 12 infants: First Words, at the beginning of the single-word period (mean age about 13 months), and a Vocabulary Spurt toward the end of the period (mean age about 19 months). Affect expression was coded continuously in the stream of the infants' activity as they and their mothers played with groups of toys and ate a snack. The occurrence of words was examined in relation to the expression of affect and the results of this study concern developments in the integration of these two forms expression. The children's words occurred closely in time with their expression of emotionally toned affect. We concluded, then, that they were learning words to express what their feelings were about even though none of the actual words they said were emotion terms. However, the cognitive requirements for emotional expression and expression through speech resulted in several constraints on their integration. Words were said with neutral affect expression most often. Emotionally toned affect expression was least likely to occur before words, with a peak in emotional expression in the moments immediately after words. The peak in emotional expression with words was significantly greater, and the pre-word dip in emotional expression was significantly less, at the Vocabulary Spurt than at First Words. Thus, the two systems of expression converged in the period of single-word development as the children came to be able to say words with emotional affect. However, their emotional expression with words had positive rather than negative valence, with low rather than heightened intensity, and were among the children's most frequent and earliest learned words. These results are discussed in terms of the acquisition of language for expression and the different cognitive requirements for expression through affect and speech.The first forms of affect expression are already available to infants in the beginning months of life and are probably biologically determined (e.g. Emde, Gaensbauer, & Harmon, 1976;Izard, 1977). By the time language begins in the second year, the development of the system of emotional expression is well underway. The purpose

Child and family correlates of toddlers' emotional and behavioral responses to a mishap

“…Recall that internal state language ability was assessed via maternal self-report. Although researchers investigating internal state language in toddlerhood often rely on maternal reports (Bloom & Beckwith, 1989), the association between maternal reports of sympathy and internal state language in the present research could be due to the fact that mothers reported on both internal state language ability and sympathy. Consequently, clarifying our findings requires observational measures for both variables and could involve sequential analyses of more in-depth and long-term observations of children's internal state language and empathy-related reactions.…”

Emotionality in free recall: Language specificity in bilingual memory

“…At a very early age, infants explore their world through sensorimotor interactions that necessarily involve affective interchanges (Anooshian & Siegel, 1985;Escalona, 1981;Neisser, 1963). Bloom and her colleagues (Bloom & Beckwith, 1989;Bloom & Capatides, 1987) documented the close relationship in infancy between the expression of affect and language development and postulated further integration of affect and language as children learn to express emotion in different contexts. More generally, prior experience establishes the ways in which new events of a similar type are processed.…”

Variations in Bilingual Processing of Positive and Negative Information

“…Emotional words seem to hold a special significance in the mental lexicon because both the language system and the emotional regulation system develop together during childhood. This means that words that are learned early are more tightly connected to the brain's emotional system [2]. This also indicates that words carry both a semantic meaning and an emotional meaning via amygdala mediated learning.…”