Developmental Trends in Children’s Use of Emotion Terms

Children (N = 64; 2 and 3 years of age) labeled another child’s emotion, based on either a prototypical facial expression or on a story about prototypical emotional events for 5 emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust). Proportion correct was low and improved only gradually with age. Children shown the faces produced more correct labels than did those told the stories. Initially, children used (and overgeneralized) two emotion labels (happy and sad) and only gradually added others (anger, fear, and disgust, in that order). Introduction Told that Judd is receiving presents at his birthday party, most adults would guess that Judd is happy. Shown Judd smiling, most adults would, again, guess that Judd is happy. But which of these two cues – a story about the emotion’s antecedents and consequences or a picture of its facial expression – is the better cue? Which cue is better for preschool children? An answer to this question can help chart the development of children’s emotion categories underlying their use of emotion terms. One possibility is that to a preschooler facial expression is a primary source of information about the emotions of others (Izard, 1994; Denham, 1998; Magai & McFadden, 1995). If so, young children might do better (make fewer errors) with facial expressions than with other cues to emotion. Another possibility is that causal antecedents and consequences are a primary source of information in that children understand emotion in a stimulus-response framework (Bullock & Russell, 1986; Harris, 1983). If so, young children might do better with stories that tell of the event that leads to the emotion. The cue that works best for younger children is likely to be the origin of children’s understanding of emotion. In this study, we asked children, aged 2 or 3 years, what emotion Judd is feeling, given one of two cues: either a prototypical facial expression of the emotion or a story specifying a prototypical causal antecedent events to the emotion and its consequences. We examined five emotions (happiness, fear, anger, disgust, sadness). Method Participants Participants were 64 children (32 girls and 32 boys) enrolled in daycares and preschools in or near Vancouver, British Columbia. All children were proficient in English. There were 16 children (8 girls and 8 boys) in each of four age groups: young 2s (24 to 29 months), older 2s (30 to 35 months), young 3s (36 to 41 months), and older 3s (42 to 47 months). Materials Photographs of Facial Expressions. A set of 5 black and white 5 x 7” photographs of a 12-year-old boy posing of prototypical facial expressions of emotion (happiness, fear, anger, disgust, sadness) were used (Widen & Russell, 2001). The facial expressions had been prepared to meet Ekman and Friesen’s (1978) criteria for particular discrete emotions. Stories of Emotional Events. Five stories describing stereotypical emotioneliciting events and responses were created (Table 1) based on prior work in our lab in which children generated causes and consequences of specific emotions. The children were shown a drawing depicting a setting of each story (e.g., a bedroom) while the story was being read. Procedure Each child participated in the two parts of the procedure in a single session. Each child’s emotion concepts were first primed. The child was then randomly assigned to either the face or story condition. The child was asked to label either five facial expressions or five stories of emotional events. Priming. The experimenter first spent time playing with a child until the child seemed comfortable with the experimenter. In order to prime the child’s emotion concepts, the experimenter began a conversation about whether the child and his or her parents had ever felt the five target emotions (happy, sad, mad, scared, disgusted). The experimenter asked, for example, “Does Y ever feel happy?” “Do you sometimes feel mad?” Every effort was made throughout the experiment to use a neutral tone of voice when presenting the emotion words. Faces. The experimenter introduced the faces by saying, “I brought some pictures of Judd a boy named Judd. Would you like to look at them with me? Okay, here is a picture of Judd [showing the neutral expression]. Do you know what Judd is going to do? He is going to show us how he feels sometimes.” The experimenter then showed the child the five facial expressions, one at a time in a random order. For the first face, the experimenter said, “One day, Judd felt like this [pointing to the face].” For the other faces, the experimenter said, “One week later, Judd felt like this [pointing to the picture].” After each picture, the experimenter asked, “How do you think Judd feels in this picture?” Stories. The experimenter introduced the stories (Table 1) by saying, “I’m going to tell you some stories about things that happened to a boy named Judd. After each one, you get to tell me how you think Judd feels. How does that sound? Remember: listen carefully, because you have to tell me how Judd feels.” The experimenter then presented the stories, one at a time in a random order. The first story began, “Once upon a time,” and the other stories began, “One week later...” After each story, the experimenter asked, “How do you think Judd feels?” Scoring The child participants were allowed to use any label they chose. The scoring key used in this study was drawn from Widen and Russell (2001) who describe the development of a scoring key based on ratings of two judges blind to the source of the labels. Responses to the faces and stories that were scored as correct for happiness were happy, excited, going to play; for fear, scared; for disgust, disgusted, yucky, gross; for anger, angry, mad, cross, frustrated, grumpy; and for sad, sad. Responses varied from what was just listed in syntax or by being embedded in a phrase (e.g., very scared, totally grossed out). These were all the labels children used that came close to specifying the specific emotion.