The relationship between emotional-state language and emotion understanding: A study with school-age children

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.