Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Basic Emotions And Early-Learned Verbs, Josita Maouene, Megumi Kuwabara, Daniel Freer, Linda B. Smith

Dr. Josita C Maouene

The purpose of this study is to describe the relationships between 102 early-learned verbs and five basic emotions in 60 children raging from 2 to 6 years of age (min 32 mo, max 72 mo). While previous research centering on the embodiment perspective has investigated such components as body parts in verb meaning (Maouene, Hidaka & Smith, 2008), this study seeks to add basic emotions to the core meaning of verbs. At a threshold of 50% agreement, the results indicate a tie: 47.6% of the verbs were related to one main emotion and 49.5% to a pair of emotions. Within …