Research Symposium

BIO

Greetings! I am a third-year student from Plantation, Florida, pursuing a B.S. in psychology with a minor in sociology. My research interests include children's emotional development, education, and behavioral interventions. This interest stems from my work with children in school settings as a summer camp and aftercare counselor. I am passionate about helping children overcome emotional challenges to improve their functioning and outcomes in every aspect of life. In the future, I plan to attend graduate school to become a school psychologist or pediatric occupational therapist.

The Emotional Valence of the Words in Picture Books Read in Preschool Settings

Abstract

Research shows that the language in books for young children differs from everyday speech that children hear (Dawson et al., 2021; Montag et al., 2015). Specifically, books and everyday speech differ in their variety of vocabulary, with books having greater breadth (Dawson et al., 2021; Montag et al., 2021). Exposure to complex vocabulary is crucial for children’s overall language development and their ability to express their thoughts and emotions (Streubel et al., 2020). One kind of vocabulary that young children can be exposed to through books is emotion vocabulary. Currently, there is little evidence about the emotional valence of the words in children’s books. Emotional valence refers to the degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness of an affective state, ranging from positive to negative (Arfe et al., 2022; Russell, 1980). Given the ubiquity and diversity of books in early childhood education classrooms, it is worthwhile to examine what emotional valence looks like across books in this setting. We utilized the English Lexicon Project (ELP) database to analyze emotional valence ratings for words included in a corpus of books (n = 104). The ELP is a standardized behavioral database of over 40,000 word ratings across 444 adult participants. These books come from observations of shared book reading interactions in early childhood education centers from 2015-2018. Our findings show that children's picture books contain more pleasant emotional words.

Keywords: Child development, Literacy, Preschool, and EmotionNa