Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 38(4), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Imagination, Cognition and Personality page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ica on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/
Accepted author manuscript, 977 KB, PDF document
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Breadth of emotion vocabulary in early adolescence
AU - Bazhydai, Marina
AU - Ivcevic, Zorana
AU - Widen, Sherri
AU - Brackett, Marc
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 38(4), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Imagination, Cognition and Personality page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ica on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/
PY - 2019/6/1
Y1 - 2019/6/1
N2 - Studies of emotion vocabulary and understanding typically focus on early childhood. Yet, emotion abilities continue to develop into adolescence, making it an important and underinvestigated area of research. This study presents evidence that adolescents’ emotion vocabulary undergoes active development, becomes more broad and sophisticated, varies by gender, and is not captured adequately by recognition-based approaches. Adolescents were asked to generate emotion words for five emotion categories—happy, relaxed, angry, sad, and nervous. Responses included emotion words (e.g., joyous) and nonemotion terms such as metaphors (e.g., boiling), social experiences (e.g., underappreciated), and personality traits (e.g., shy). Girls generated significantly more responses than boys. Older adolescents generated significantly more emotion words (e.g., describing someone who is happy as joyful, exuberant or ecstatic), while younger adolescents produced more nonemotion responses (e.g., describing someone who is happy as smiley, friendly, or full of life). Students’ grade, total number of responses they produced, and performance on the recognition test of emotion understanding predicted their emotion vocabulary.
AB - Studies of emotion vocabulary and understanding typically focus on early childhood. Yet, emotion abilities continue to develop into adolescence, making it an important and underinvestigated area of research. This study presents evidence that adolescents’ emotion vocabulary undergoes active development, becomes more broad and sophisticated, varies by gender, and is not captured adequately by recognition-based approaches. Adolescents were asked to generate emotion words for five emotion categories—happy, relaxed, angry, sad, and nervous. Responses included emotion words (e.g., joyous) and nonemotion terms such as metaphors (e.g., boiling), social experiences (e.g., underappreciated), and personality traits (e.g., shy). Girls generated significantly more responses than boys. Older adolescents generated significantly more emotion words (e.g., describing someone who is happy as joyful, exuberant or ecstatic), while younger adolescents produced more nonemotion responses (e.g., describing someone who is happy as smiley, friendly, or full of life). Students’ grade, total number of responses they produced, and performance on the recognition test of emotion understanding predicted their emotion vocabulary.
KW - emotion
KW - adolescence
KW - vocabulary
KW - emotion concepts
U2 - 10.1177/0276236618765403
DO - 10.1177/0276236618765403
M3 - Journal article
VL - 38
SP - 378
EP - 404
JO - Imagination, Cognition and Personality
JF - Imagination, Cognition and Personality
SN - 0276-2366
IS - 4
ER -