Abstract Despite its importance for furthering social relationships, the development of the emotional lexicon has seldom been studied. Recent research suggests that during childhood, emotion words are acquired less rapidly than concrete words, but more rapidly than abstract words. The present study directly compared the comprehension of emotion words with the comprehension of concrete and abstract words in children aged 4–7 years. Children were shown 48 sets of four pictures and for each set had to point to the picture corresponding to a word that had just been pronounced. Words referred to concrete (16), abstract (16), or emotional (16) concepts. Results showed that concrete words were better understood than either emotion or abstract words, and emotion words were better understood than abstract ones. This finding emphasises the importance of the emotional lexicon in lexical development, and suggests that emotion word comprehension should be enhanced through regular training. This would increase children’s emotional knowledge, improve their communication skills, and promote their socialisation.

中文翻译：

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4-7岁儿童情绪词理解

摘要 尽管情感词汇的发展对于促进社会关系具有重要意义，但很少有人对其进行研究。最近的研究表明，在童年时期，情感词的获得速度不如具体词，但比抽象词快。本研究直接比较了 4-7 岁儿童对情感词的理解与对具体和抽象词的理解。向孩子们展示了 48 组四张图片，每组必须指向与刚刚发音的单词相对应的图片。涉及具体 (16)、抽象 (16) 或情感 (16) 概念的词。结果表明，具体词比情感词或抽象词更好理解，情感词比抽象词更好理解。这一发现强调了情感词汇在词汇发展中的重要性，并建议应通过定期训练来提高情感词的理解能力。这将增加孩子的情感知识，提高他们的沟通技巧，并促进他们的社交。