Label superiority effect on emotional voices in young children

Abstract

Emotion labels can be helpful for creating emotion categories. Russell and Widen (2002) demonstrated the label superiority effect; that is, emotion labels produce a more precise categorization of emotional faces than the corresponding emotional faces. The current study aimed to test the label superiority effect on emotional voices and examined whether emotion labels produce a more precise categorization of emotional voices than the corresponding emotional voices. Four- to six-year-olds were shown emotion categories, represented by a box, and emotion labels (e.g., ‘happy’ label) or corresponding unlabelled vocal expressions were used to specify the target emotions. The children had to decide which of a group of test voices should go into the box and which should be left out. We presented happy and angry voices in Experiment 1 and angry and fearful voices in Experiment 2. The results in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 1, showed that children were more likely to correctly choose the target emotion using the emotion label than the emotional voices, partially confirming the label superiority effect on emotional voices.