The process by which emotion concepts are learned is largely unexplored. Hoemann, Devlin, and Barrett (2020) and Shablack, Stein, and Lindquist (2020) argue that emotion concepts are learned through emotion labels (e.g., “happy”), which cohere variable aspects of emotions into abstract, conceptual categories. While such labeling-dependent learning mechanisms (supervised learning) are plausible, we argue that labeling-independent learning mechanisms (unsupervised learning) are also involved. Specifically, we argue that infants are uniquely situated to learn emotion concepts given their exceptional learning abilities. We provide evidence that children learn from complex, irregular input in other domains (e.g., symbolic numbers) without supervised instruction. Thus, while labels undoubtedly influence emotion concept learning, we must also look beyond language to create a comprehensive theory of emotion concept development.

学习情感概念的过程在很大程度上尚未探索。Hoemann，Devlin和Barrett（2020）以及Shablack，Stein和Lindquist（2020）认为，情感概念是通过情感标签（例如“快乐”）学习的，情感标签将情感的各个方面整合为抽象的概念类别。尽管这种依赖于标签的学习机制（监督学习）是合理的，但我们认为也存在涉及标签无关的学习机制（无监督学习）。具体来说，我们认为，婴儿具有特殊的学习能力，因此他们处于独特的位置来学习情感概念。我们提供的证据表明，在没有监督指导的情况下，儿童可以从其他领域（例如符号数字）的复杂，不规则的输入中学习。因此，标签无疑会影响情绪概念的学习，