Interactions between vocabulary skills and recognition of basic emotion labels in two-years-olds

Interactions between vocabulary skills and recognition of basic emotion labels in two-years-olds

Oytun Aygun, Louise Goyet, and Pia Rämä

LPP, Université Paris Descartes, France

When children start to categorize emotions, they initially form broad categories that are fine-tuned with experience during the preschool years (Russel and Widen, 2010). It has been suggested that language aids decoding facial expressions through categorisation and mental representations, and it is likely that developing language skills contribute to category fine-tuning. We hypothesized that 24-months-old children with higher expressive vocabulary skills are better at recognizing facial expressions than those who have lower level of language skills. We tested thirty French-learning children in a looking-while-listening task to assess recognition of four basic emotion labels (happy, sad, fear, angry). Children were presented with images of two faces expressing emotions, and after a short preview, one of them was labelled. Looking times to target emotions during pre- and post-naming phases were recorded. Vocabulary skills were measured using a CDI questionnaire. The results showed that children with higher vocabulary skills looked longer at the happy and fearful target face after the naming. Children with lower expressive vocabulary skills did not show a naming effect, that is, they looked equally both the target and the distracter image after naming. Our results suggest that developing vocabulary skills contribute to recognition of emotion labels in young children.