Freier Beitrag Die semantische Repräsentation von Emotionsbegriffen bei Kindern im Grundschulalter Christina Kauschke 1 , Daniela Bahn 1 , Michael Vesker 2 und Gudrun Schwarzer 2 1 Philipps-Universität Marburg 2 Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen Zusammenfassung: Dem Erwerb von Emotionsbegriffen kommt eine besondere Bedeutung im kindlichen Lexikonerwerb zu. Zum einen ermöglicht das Emotionsvokabular den zwischenmenschlichen Austausch über Gefühle, zum anderen erfüllen Emotionsbe- griffe aufgrund ihrer besonderen semantischen Eigenschaften eine Brückenfunktion für den Erwerb abstrakter Wortbedeutungen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Wortverarbeitung bei 86 Kindern zwischen sechs und neun Jahren an einer Auswahl von 24 Emotionsbegriffen. Vier Aufgaben mit unterschiedlichem Schwierigkeitsgrad und unterschiedlichen Anforderungen an die semanti- sche Verarbeitung wurden eingesetzt: lexikalisches Entscheiden (Wort-Pseudowort), emotionales Kategorisieren (positiv-negativ), Wortverstehen (Wortauswahl aus Ablenkermenge) und Wortproduktion (Satzvervollständigung). In allen Aufgabentypen zeigten sich Verbesserungen mit zunehmendem Alter, wobei sich die Leistungen in Abhängigkeit vom Aufgabentyp unterschieden. Die Ergebnisse zu Korrektheit, Reaktionszeit und Fehlertypen verdeutlichen, wie Kinder ihr Wissen über die Bedeutung von Emotionsbegriffen im Laufe des Grundschulalters ausdifferenzieren. Schlüsselwörter: Lexikonentwicklung, Wortverarbeitung, Emotionswörter, Valenz, lexikalisches Entscheiden, Kategorisierung, Se- mantik The Semantic Representation of Emotion Terms in Child Development Abstract: Emotion terms are part of the emotive vocabulary represented in the mental lexicon. The acquisition of emotion terms is a relevant domain of later lexical development. Emotion terms are seen as precursors of successful learning of abstract vocabulary, as they illustrate the distinction between entities existing in the physical world and those existing only in the human mind. The central aim of the present study was to scrutinize the development of semantic representations during childhood. The study investigates the processing of 24 emotion terms (12 positive and 12 negative items, matched for frequency, arousal, age of acquisition, concreteness, and word length) in 86 children between 6 and 9 years of age. We used four tasks that require access to different aspects of lexical and semantic knowledge: lexical decision (word or pseudoword), emotional categorization (evaluation as positive or negative), word comprehension (sentence completion with four response options), and word production (free sentence completion). Results demonstrated that children improved with increasing age: 9 year-olds performed better than 6 year-olds in all of the tasks, and their reaction times were faster than those of the younger children in the decision and categorization task. These results uncover relevant developmental changes in the acquisition of emotion terms during middle childhood. A qualitative analysis of the responses in the sentence completion tasks revealed sensitivity to semantic features of emotion words: If the children did not select the target item, they chose another emotion term of the same valence. Similarly, the responses in the productive completion task showed that more than 70 % of the children used semantically adequate terms: Obviously, words that denote emotions form a lexical class for children at school age. Moreover, the children’s reactions reflected the task demands: Although accuracy was similar in lexical decision and in emotional categorization, reaction times were slower in the categorization task. Accuracy differences between the two sentence completion tasks suggested that comprehension of emotion terms was superior to production. In addition, it was found that 6 year- old children showed preferential processing of positive compared to negative words in the lexical decision and in the emotional categorization task. Taken together, the present study shows that the semantic representation and processing of emotion terms expands and differentiates during school age. The increasing availability of an emotion vocabulary allows children to effectively communicate about emotional events. Keywords: lexical development, word processing, emotion terms, valence, lexical decision, categorization, semantics Die Studie ist Teil des DFG-geförderten Collaborative Research Center „Cardinal Mechanisms of Perception“ (SFB/TRR135 540 135/1 2014) an den Universitäten Marburg und Gießen. Wir bedanken uns bei Linda Gerlach und Sina Elsholz für die Erhebung der Daten zu Studie 3 und 4. © 2017 Hogrefe Verlag Kindheit und Entwicklung (2017), 26 (4), 251–260 DOI: 10.1026/0942-5403/a000238 http://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/pdf/10.1026/0942-5403/a000238 - Christina Kauschke <kauschke@uni-marburg.de> - Thursday, August 31, 2017 12:51:54 AM - Universitätsbibliothek Marburg IP Address:137.248.81.165