Abstract

A label superiority effect refers to the tendency of young children to categorize facial expressions based on emotion labels (e.g., “happy”) more accurately than those based on photographs of facial expressions (e.g., “smile”). However, it is unclear whether this effect stems from inaccuracies in children’s spontaneous labeling of facial expressions or their tendency not to label facial expressions spontaneously. To further explore the label superiority effect, Japanese children aged 3–5 years (N = 48) were assigned to one of three conditions: label cue, photo cue, and compelled to label, and asked to categorize facial expressions by emotion by placing cards in a box. The children correctly put more facial expressions in the box for label cues than photo cues, but the compelled to label group performed as well as the label cues group. These results suggest that the label superiority effect occurs because children do not label facial expressions spontaneously, and this tendency may explain their difficulty in understanding facial expressions.

摘要

标签优势效应是指幼儿倾向于比基于面部表情照片（例如“微笑”）的基于情感标签（例如“快乐”）的面部表情更准确的分类。但是，尚不清楚这种效果是源于儿童自发标记面部表情的不准确性还是源于不自发标记面部表情的趋势。为了进一步开拓标签的优势作用，3-5岁的日本孩子（ñ = 48）被分配给以下三个条件之一：标签提示，照片提示，并被迫贴上标签，并要求通过将卡片放在盒子中按情感对面部表情进行分类。孩子们将正确的面部表情放入标签提示框而不是照片提示框，但强迫标签组的表现和标签提示组一样好。这些结果表明，由于儿童没有自发地标记面部表情，因此出现了标签优势效应，这种趋势可能解释了他们理解面部表情的困难。