Identifying Emotions through Language Means in Early Childhood

The paper focuses on the development of higher mental functions responsible for emotional regulation and describes a study revealing the stages in which young children acquire certain language means that help them to identify emotional states and understand emotional relationships. The sample of the study consisted of 94 children aged from 1.8 to 7.5 years. The outcomes suggest that at the age of 1.8 the children begin to acquire skills necessary for recognizing emotions basing on what the adults tell them. The revealed general tendency in the development of object reference of words is as follows: at first the children are able to identify emotional states and relationships according to the context of intersubjective interactions; later, basing on facial expressions; and finally, basing on pictograms of facial expressions. At the age of 2.4 years the children begin to employ language tools for identifying and naming emotions in others by themselves. Basing on their experience of analyzing emotions in others, the children then gradually develop the skills for identifying and partly rec¬ognizing their own emotions. Such skills may actually be found in some children at the age of 3.5 years, but usually it is not until the age of 7.5 that they can be observed in most preschoolers.