title: The relationship between emotional-state language and emotion understanding: a study with school-age children.
abstract: We carried out an investigation with primary-school children on the relationship between both use and comprehension of emotional-state language and emotion understanding. Participants were 100 students between 7 and 10 years old (mean age=8 years and 10 months; SD=15.3 months), equally divided by gender. They completed four tests evaluating their language ability, use of emotional-state language, comprehension of emotional-state language and emotion understanding (EU) respectively. Significant correlations were found between both use and comprehension of emotional-state talk and children's EU. In addition, regression analyses showed that comprehension of emotional-state language, rather than its use, plays a significant role in explaining children's emotion understanding.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Sciences "R Massa" , University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy. veronica.ornaghi1@unimib.it
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ornaghi
authors.forename: Ilaria
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Grazzani
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002657:Child Development; D032882:Comprehension; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D056345:Theory of Mind