DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN EMOTIONAL VALENCE RATINGS OF WORDS AND PICTURES

Abstract

"Words and pictures stimuli are often used in study of perception, language, and memory. More and more studies are being done on how emotional words or pictures influence different cognitive processing. However, the emotional rating process of these stimuli has rarely been studied in young children. Especially, no study has investigated emotional rating process on pre-schoolers. This research examines how young children process emotional words and pictures stimuli. More precisely, we measured age (4, 5, and 6-years-old) and sex differences (girls and boys) in emotional valence rating of pictures and words. A corpus of 90 words and 90 pictures was selected from among the emotional databases compiled by Alario & Ferrand (1999), Bonin et al. (2003), Cannard et al. (2006) Syssau & Monnier (2009). This corpus was rated by 92 French children (28 four-years-old children, 16 girls and 12 boys; 34 five-years-old children, 14 girls and 20 boys; and 30 six-years-old children, 13 girls and 17 boys). These ratings were made using a three points emotional valence rating scale (negative, neutral, and positive) based on AEJE scale (Largy, 2018). To keep the rating task simple for the children, the scale labels were using drawings of faces. The 90 Words and 90 pictures were divided in sets of 15 stimuli. Each child rated all sets of stimuli in separate sessions. These sessions were in a random order between words and pictures stimuli sets. Good response reliability was observed in the three age groups. We assessed age differences in the valence ratings: Four-year-old children shown lower mean scores in valence rating (positive, neutral, and negative) than did five-year-old ones who shown lower mean scores in valence rating than did six-year-old ones. Despite a lack of consensus in the literature, we found sex differences in the valence ratings. Girls in each age groups shown higher mean scores in valence rating than did boys. Moreover, results shown a significant difference between pictures and words ratings. Children better rated words than pictures in each age group and sex. Besides, analyses revealed significant differences in emotional valence rating between negative, neutral, and positive words and pictures stimuli. Positive words and pictures stimuli were better rated by children than negative ones which were better rated than neutral ones. Future research will compile this corpus in a database, and it could become a worthwhile tool to control emotional verbal and visual stimuli in experimental design for children."