TY - JOUR A1 - Streubel, Berit A1 - Gunzenhauser, Catherine A1 - Große, Gerlind A1 - Saalbach, Henrik T1 - Emotion-specific vocabulary and its contribution to emotion understanding in 4- to 9-year-old children JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology N2 - Positive associations between children’s general language skills and emotion understanding are well documented. Concurrently, research from other domains highlights the importance of domain-specific language skills for conceptual development. The current study examined the relative contributions of emotion-specific and general vocabulary to individual differences in multiple early-acquired components of emotion understanding (e.g., facial emotion recognition) and later-acquired components (e.g., knowledge of emotion regulation strategies) in 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 86). Emotion-specific vocabulary was measured by size (i.e., number of emotion words children use) and depth (i.e., adult-like use of emotion words). Findings emphasize the role of children’s emotion-specific vocabulary rather than general vocabulary for early-acquired and later-acquired components of emotion understanding, especially when measured by expressive tasks. At preschool age, the size of emotion-specific vocabulary explains children’s knowledge of emotion regulation strategies. In primary school, however, the depth of emotion-specific vocabulary becomes relevant for individual differences in emotion understanding. KW - Sprachkompetenz KW - Kleinkind KW - Kind KW - Gefühlsempfindung Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104790 SN - 0022-0965 VL - 193 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -