Premium
Take Your Word or Tone for It? European American and Chinese Children’s Attention to Emotional Cues in Speech
Author(s) -
Yang Yang,
Wang Li,
Wang Qi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.13576
Subject(s) - psychology , tone (literature) , word (group theory) , linguistics , cognitive psychology , philosophy
Cultural experiences can influence how people attend to different emotional cues. Whereas semantic content explicitly describes feelings, vocal tone conveys implicit information regarding emotions. This cross‐cultural study examined children’s attention to emotional cues in spoken words. The sample consisted of 121 European American (EA) and 120 Chinese children (4–9 years old). Each child played two computer games in which they listened to spoken words and judged the pleasantness of either the word meaning (Word game) or the vocal tone (Tone game) while ignoring the other aspect. Chinese children paid more spontaneous attention to vocal tones and less to word meanings than did EA children. These findings shed critical light on the role of culture in shaping affective cognitive processes during development.