Talking about feelings: young children's ability to express emotions.
OBJECTIVE
The aim is to establish which emotion-descriptive language is used by children at different ages.


METHODS
Fifty-six children (aged 5 to 11 years) were presented with a set of plastic playpeople. Scenarios were enacted using the toys to elicit emotion descriptive vocabulary in response to the interviewer's question: How do you think s/he feels about that? Eight adult subjects participated as a control.


RESULTS
Children under the age of 8 years have a limited repertoire of labels to describe emotions. Even 11-year-olds are unable to produce vocabulary which expresses emotion concepts described by adults. The implications of our findings for child-police interviews are discussed.
Aldridge
M
M
School of English and Linguistics, University of Wales, Bangor, UK.
Wood
J
J
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D010988:Play and Playthings; D014825:Vocabulary