Children grasp the meaning of words either too broadly or narrowly at first, and then show a gradual progression toward adult-like understanding. This study investigated changes in the semantic domains of words for emotions. Children in the 2-year old (
n=29, age range=2;6–3;7), 3 year-old (
n=30, age range=3;6–4;7), 4- year old (
n=30, age range=4;6–5;7) and 5-year old (
n=29, age range=5;6–6;7) classes at preschools labeled emotions in response to a story task and a facial expression task. The number of words for emotions they labeled increased only between the 2- and 3-year old classes. However, for both tasks, 5-year olds divided stimuli more individually than did 3- and 4-year olds. These results show that for emotion words, lexical refinement and change of semantic domains continue even after words have entered children's vocabulary.
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