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Development in Children’s Interpretation of Pitch Cues to Emotions
Author(s) -
Quam Carolyn,
Swingley Daniel
Publication year - 2011
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/j.1467-8624.2011.01700.x
Subject(s) - paralanguage , psychology , prosody , interpretation (philosophy) , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , phenomenon , facial expression , cue dependent forgetting , developmental psychology , communication , linguistics , physics , management , quantum mechanics , philosophy , economics
Young infants respond to positive and negative speech prosody (A. Fernald, 1993), yet 4‐year‐olds rely on lexical information when it conflicts with paralinguistic cues to approval or disapproval (M. Friend, 2003). This article explores this surprising phenomenon, testing one hundred eighteen 2‐ to 5‐year‐olds’ use of isolated pitch cues to emotions in interactive tasks. Only 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds consistently interpreted exaggerated, stereotypically happy or sad pitch contours as evidence that a puppet had succeeded or failed to find his toy (Experiment 1) or was happy or sad (Experiments 2, 3). Two‐ and 3‐year‐olds exploited facial and body‐language cues in the same task. The authors discuss the implications of this late‐developing use of pitch cues to emotions, relating them to other functions of pitch.