Charting the development of emotion comprehension and abstraction from childhood to adulthood using observer-rated and linguistic measures.

Abstract

This study examined two facets of emotion development: emotion word comprehension (knowing the meaning of emotion words such as "anger" or "excitement") and emotion concept abstraction (representing emotions in terms of internal psychological states that generalize across situations). Using a novel emotion vocabulary assessment, we captured how a cross-sectional sample of participants aged 4 -25 (N ϭ 196) defined 24 emotions. Smoothing spline regression models suggested that emotion comprehension followed an emergent shape: Knowledge of emotion words increased across childhood and plateaued around age 11. Human coders rated the abstractness of participants' responses, and these ratings also followed an emergent shape but plateaued significantly later than comprehension, around age 18. An automated linguistic analysis of abstractness supported coders' perceptions of increased abstractness across age. Finally, coders assessed the definitional strategies participants used to describe emotions. Young children tended to describe emotions using concrete strategies such as providing example situations that evoked those emotions or by referring to physiological markers of emotional experiences. Whereas use of these concrete strategies decreased with age, the tendency to use more abstract strategies such as providing general definitions that delineated the causes and characteristics of emotions or by providing synonyms of emotion words increased with age. Overall, this work (a) provides a tool for assessing definitions of emotion terms, (b) demonstrates that emotion concept abstraction increases across age, and (c) suggests that adolescence is a period in which emotion words are comprehended but their level of abstraction continues to mature.

Low Emotional Awareness as a Transdiagnostic Mechanism Underlying Psychopathology in Adolescence

“…Data were drawn from a cross-sectional study of emotional development (Nook et al, 2017, 2018; Nook et al, 2019) conducted in a community sample spanning ages 4 to 25 years. Psychopathology measures were validated only for participants age 7 to 19 years.…”

Voluntary pursuit of negatively valenced stimuli from childhood to early adulthood

“…Two hundred and three participants were enrolled in a broader study of emotional development (see Nook, Sasse, Lambert, McLaughlin, & Somerville, 2017; Nook, Sasse, Lambert, McLaughlin, & Somerville, 2018; Nook et al., 2019; Weissman et al, in press). Data from 11 participants were unusable and thus excluded (two did not complete the task, seven did not understand and/or cooperate with instructions, two experienced technical problems).…”

Lost by definition: Why boredom matters for psychology and society

“…It's possible: emotions, constructivist approaches argue, stem from the contextual categorization of sensations in the body and their perceived causes, as belonging to recognized emotion categories (Barrett, 2006b). Such categories are thought to be culturally acquired, and both reflected in and learned via language (e.g., Lindquist, 2009; Lindquist, 2017; Lindquist, Barrett, Bliss‐Moreau, & Russell, 2006); indeed, language is sometimes argued to be a prerequisite for higher‐order emotion, with children exhibiting more emotional specificity and complexity alongside language acquisition (e.g., Nook et al, 2020; Nook, Sasse, Lambert, McLaughlin, & Somerville, 2018). It follows then that some emotion constructs may be culturally specific, tailored to categorize situations of unique concern or prevalence in that society.…”