Abstract
This study investigated young children's ability to express emotions on a verbal task and on two non-verbal tasks (a drawing task and a facial expression-making task). Forty-four young children (4–6 years old) participated individually. The experimenter told a story and asked each child to answer with what kind of emotion (happy, sad, angry, fear or surprise) the protagonist would feel, to draw the protagonist's facial expression on the contour of a human face, and to make the same kind of facial expression as that of the protagonist. The results showed that there was no significant correlation between children's behavior on the verbal task and on the non-verbal expression tasks, and that a significant correlation was found between scores on the two expression tasks in the younger age group (range＝4 ; 5–5 ; 5). This latter finding suggests that non-verbal tasks can measure different aspects of emotions from that measured by the verbal task, and that the drawing task may possibly elucidate young children's ability to expressions emotions facially.
