During the last decade several studies focused on the role of language in mental state comprehension. These works proved that different linguistic skills – in particular lexicon, syntax and semantics – are closely related to emotion understanding (Harris & de Rosnay, 2002; Pons et al., 2003). At present, we know little about the influence of pragmatic abilities on children’s emotion understanding. We hypothesize that pragmatic skills, particularly the ability of making inferences, can be considered as good indicators of children’s emotion understanding. 80 Italian children between the ages of 4 and 7 years, attending their nursery or primary school, participate in the study. We used different tests to assess children’s lexical and syntactic knowledge, their pragmatic competences and their emotion understanding. Results showed that – at a global level – syntactic and lexical abilities are the best predictors of emotion understanding, but making inferences is the only significant predictor of the most complex components (reflective dimension) of emotion comprehension.

Farina, E., Albanese, O., Pons, F. (2007). Making Inferences and Comprehension of Emotions in Children of 5-7 years of age. PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION, 11(2), 3-19.

Making Inferences and Comprehension of Emotions in Children of 5-7 years of age

FARINA, ELEONORA;ALBANESE, OTTAVIA;
2007

Abstract

During the last decade several studies focused on the role of language in mental state comprehension. These works proved that different linguistic skills – in particular lexicon, syntax and semantics – are closely related to emotion understanding (Harris & de Rosnay, 2002; Pons et al., 2003). At present, we know little about the influence of pragmatic abilities on children’s emotion understanding. We hypothesize that pragmatic skills, particularly the ability of making inferences, can be considered as good indicators of children’s emotion understanding. 80 Italian children between the ages of 4 and 7 years, attending their nursery or primary school, participate in the study. We used different tests to assess children’s lexical and syntactic knowledge, their pragmatic competences and their emotion understanding. Results showed that – at a global level – syntactic and lexical abilities are the best predictors of emotion understanding, but making inferences is the only significant predictor of the most complex components (reflective dimension) of emotion comprehension.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
emotion comprehension, inferences, language
English
2007
11
2
3
19
none
Farina, E., Albanese, O., Pons, F. (2007). Making Inferences and Comprehension of Emotions in Children of 5-7 years of age. PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION, 11(2), 3-19.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/6173
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