Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ponari, Marta
• Norbury, Courtenay Frazier
• Vigliocco, Gabriella

Titel

Acquisition of abstract concepts is influenced by emotional valence

Ist Teil von

• Developmental science, 2018-03, Vol.21 (2), p.n/a

Ort / Verlag

England: Wiley-Blackwell

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EBSCOhost Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• There is considerable lack of evidence concerning the linguistic and cognitive skills underpinning vocabulary acquisition. The present study considers the role of emotional valence in providing an embodied learning experience in which to anchor meanings. First, analyses of adult ratings of age‐of‐acquisition, concreteness and valence demonstrate that words acquired early tend to be emotionally valenced. Second, auditory Lexical Decision accuracies of children aged 6–7, 8–9, and 10–11 years (n = 20 per group) complement these analyses, demonstrating that emotional valence facilitates processing of words, but not concrete. These findings provide the first evidence that young, school‐aged children are sensitive to emotional valence and that this facilitates acquisition of words. In this study we report converging evidence from both analyses of age‐of‐acquisition ratings and children’s performance on an auditory lexical decision task, showing that emotion (especially positive) plays a role in learning early words, particularly at around the age of 8–9.