Abstract:

This study used an affective priming paradigm to examine the development of children’s emotion recognition ability and the interplay between children’s emotional word processing and emotional face processing. Experiment 1 used emotion words to prime emotional faces and explored the effects of verbal emotional information on emotional face processing. Experiment 2 used emotional faces to prime emotional words and explored the effects of emotional faces on the processing of verbal emotional information. The results showed that children judged emotional stimuli faster and more accurately with age. In the positive word-priming condition, children in all age groups showed a consistency effect, whereas in the negative word-priming condition, a consistency effect was observed only in the 7-year-old group. In the face-priming condition, all age groups showed a consistency effect, but no interactions between the other variables and age were found. This indicates that there is mutual influence between the emotional information of speech and faces in children’s emotion recognition, and children’s ability to recognize facial emotions is regulated by age, providing developmental empirical support for the theory of embodied emotion cognition.

Key words: children’s emotion recognition, emotional words, emotional face, embodied emotion theory

摘要：

本研究采用情绪启动范式考察儿童情绪识别能力的发展以及儿童情绪词加工与情绪面孔加工的相互影响。实验1采用情绪词启动情绪面孔，探讨言语情绪信息对情绪面孔加工的影响。实验2采用情绪面孔启动情绪词，探讨情绪面孔对言语情绪信息加工的影响。结果发现，随着年龄的增长，儿童对情绪刺激判断更快、更准确。在积极词启动条件下，各年龄组儿童均表现出效价一致性效应；而在消极词启动条件下，仅7岁组儿童出现一致性效应。在面孔启动条件下，所有年龄组均表现出效价一致性效应，但未发现其他变量与年龄之间的交互作用。这表明儿童情绪识别中言语与面孔的情绪信息存在相互影响，且儿童的面孔情绪识别能力受年龄调节，为情绪具身认知理论提供了发展性的实证支持。

关键词: 儿童情绪识别, 言语情绪词, 面孔情绪, 情绪具身观