The Relationship Between Vocabulary Size and Emotion Understanding in Children Aged 5–7 Years

Abstract

Background. Vygotsky’s idea of the affect and intellect unity continues to be developed empirically. Much attention is paid to the child's emotional development, which affects social and academic effectiveness. Knowledge regarding the relationship between language and emotional development within the social situation helps to better understand the developmental characteristics of preschool children in general and create the necessary corrective programs. Objectives. The aim is to study the characteristics of the relationship between language and emotional development (based on the general and emotional vocabulary size) and the level of emotion understanding at preschool age. Study Participants. The study involved 341 children aged 57 to 90 months (M = 75.42 months; SD = 7.65 months). 170 children were from the senior groups of the preschool educational institution (M = 69.09 months; SD = 4.4 months), and 171 children were from the preparatory groups of the preschool educational institution (M = 81.67 months; SD = 4.2 months). Methods. To assess the general vocabulary size the Peabody Test technique was used. To assess the volume of active and passive emotional vocabulary, the Roepstorff “Emotional Vocabulary” test was used. To diagnose ability to understand emotions in preschoolers, F. Pons’s “Test for Emotions Comprehension” method was used. Results. It was found that age is significantly associated with indicators of general and emotional vocabulary size, as well as with the understanding of emotions in all identified aspects. Different levels of emotion understanding have different relationships with vocabulary, both general and emotional. An important result is the identification of the significance of the contribution of active rather than passive emotional vocabulary to emotion understanding, suggesting a significant role of verbalisation of the emotional state, helping preschoolers to better understand emotion. Conclusions. The study showed that language development influenced the understanding of emotions in preschool age. At the same time, with age there is an increase in the size of children’s general and emotional vocabulary, as well as their ability to understand emotions.

Keywords

• preschool age
• emotions understanding
• general vocabulary
• emotional vocabulary