Judgments of vocal affect by language-delayed children.
Judgment of vocal affect was studied in 19 language-delayed children and 19 children with normal language. The children responded to utterances spoken in an angry, happy, or sad tone of voice by pointing to a picture of an angry, a happy, or a sad face. The language-delayed children made significantly fewer correct judgments. The normal children judged all three emotions quite accurately, whereas the language-delayed children were very poor in judging sadness and showed a bias for judging all three emotional tones as anger. The language-delayed children tended to improve with age, but age trends in normal children were obscured by near-perfect performance of many children. The practical and theoretical importance of further research was discussed.
D000339:Affect; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D014831:Voice