the developmental study of the language of emotions

The Developmental Study of the Language ofEmotions

Unique Individual Responses

Muriel King Taylor, M.D.

Several prior papers detail our attempts to explicate some of theprocesses by which emotions are named and described by latencyaged children (Lewis et al., 1971, 1972a, 1972b; Wolman et al.,1971, 1972a, 1972b). We asked 256 grade-school pupils how theyexperienced or might describe words such as hungry, thirsty, sleepy,sad, happy, angry, scared, and nervous (Wolman et al., 1972a). Inlooking at their replies, we concluded that a developmental formatwould be helpful.

Our assumption that with increasing age children would find theprecipitants for feeling and would ascribe increasingly their emotional experience as physically internal, was confirmed (Wolman etal., 1971, 1972b). Thus, children (boys somewhat more than girls),in answer to a question about when they might feel hungry, sleepy,sad, etc., increasingly depended on internal rather than externalcues as they grew older (Wolman et al., 1971). Similarly, as theygrew older, the children, both boys and girls, described their experience of a given emotion as having an internal locus (Wolman etal., 1972b). More specifically, the body zones indicated by the children as associated with their experience of certain words, i.e., thirstycoming to be associated with the mouth and throat, hungry with thestomach, angry with the head-brain, and nervous with the extremities, changed in older, in contrast to younger, children (Wolman etal., 1972b). Our attempt to discover what children wanted to do(intention) in the face of a particular feeling led first of all to a developmental discrepancy in the ability of the children to respondwhich divided physiologically toned words, such as hungry, thirsty,

Dr. Taylor isAssistant Professor ofPsychiatry in the Division of Child Psychiatry, Department ofPsychiatry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, where requests for reprints may beaddressed to her.

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668 Muriel King Taylor

sleepy, from psychologically toned words: scared, angry, happy,sad, and nervous (Lewis et al., 1972a). Thus, children of all ageswere able to define intentions with respect to the first category,while only among the older children could a majority say what theywant to do when scared, sad, happy, angry, or nervous (Lewis etal., 1972a). Of particular interest were the intention responses tosad and angry. Thus, the older the children, the more their responses emphasized avoidance of feelings of sadness and deemphasized coping tactics, while with feelings of anger, the exact opposite situation pertained: the older the children, the more theyrelied on coping techniques to deal with angry feelings, and theless they related desires to avoid the feeling or situation (Lewis etal., 1972a). Finally, anxiety was studied in relation to the fournegatively toned words: angry, sad, scared, and nervous (Lewis etal., 1972b). Interestingly, for angry, boys as they grew older, evidenced more separation anxiety and less castration anxiety, whilegirls demonstrated the obverse relationship (Lewis et al., 1972b).

In the process of interviewing the children about their feelings,we were impressed with the enthusiasm and verve with which thechildren engaged in this task. In codifying their answers, we wereintrigued with a number of responses which were unique andcould not be accounted for within the framework detailed above.Reviewing these responses suggested to me a restudy of some ofPiaget's work, with the possibility that they might be understoodmore dearly within a Piaget model.

SOME NOTIONS

In the course of looking at all of the children's responses andselecting those which did seem unusual, I thought that the conceptof the observing ego was a particularly relevant context in which toconsider these particular responses. For example, if infancy is distinguished by egocentricity (the infant conceiving the externalworld as an extension of his own body), while maturity is markedby the ability to conceive of the self from the vantage point ofanother, how then are the perceptions of emotions as internal experiences acquired? Some of our studies suggest that the childrenprogressively internalized both their perception of the emotion itself and the cues for its arousal as they grew older. Similarly, olderchildren reported experiences of emotions which were more oftenconnected with thoughts or ideas as opposed to bodily sensations.How, then, does this internalizing, abstracting process take place inthe latency-age child Who is externally directed and concerned withhis environment and peers, while seemingly less internally preoc-

Development of the Language ofEmotions 669

cupied? The attainment of awareness of self and of one's emotionalstate would seem to be a paradoxical achievement.

Piaget (l923) described the child as "constantly the victim of aconfusion between his own point of view and that of other people"(p. 17) and the adult's advantage: "the further a man has advancedin his own line of thought, the better able is he to see things fromthe point of view of others and to make himself understood bythem" (p. 39). Further, according to Flavell's (l963) interpretation,Piaget "asserts very strongly that representational thought does notbegin with and result from the incorporation of verbal signs fromthe social environment. ... Rather, the first signifiers are the private, nonverbal symbols which emerge towards the end of sensorymotor development ... like the piece of cloth ... Jacquelineused to represent a pillow in pretended going-to-sleep actions.. . .It is not the acquisition of language which gives rise to the symbolicfunction. Quite the contrary, the symbolic function is a very general and basic acquisition which makes possible the acquisition ofboth private symbols and social signs [language]" (p. 155). Piaget(l923) describes the egocentric logic of the early latency child asfollows:

1. ego-centric logic is intuitive, more "syncretistic" than deductive. . . . The mind leaps from premise to conclusion at a singlebound.... 2.... The vision of the whole brings about a stateof belief and a feeling of security far more rapidly than if eachstep in the argument were made explicit. 3. Personal schemas ofanalogy are made use of, likewise memories of earlier reasoning,which control the present course of reasoning without openlymanifesting their influence. 4. Visual schemas also play an important part, and can even take the place of proof in supportingthe deduction.... 5. Finally, judgments of value have far moreinfluence on ego-centric than on communicable thought [po46f.].

These formulations contrast with communicable logic in which wefind:

1. ... More of an attempt to render explicit the relations be-tween propositions.... 2. Greater emphasis is laid on proof.... 3. Schemas of analogy tend to be eliminated, and to be replaced by deduction proper. 4. Visual schemas are also doneaway with, first as incommunicable, and later as useless for purposes of demonstration. 5. Finally, personal judgments of valueare eliminated in favour of collective judgments of value [po 47].

It is then in the light of this continuum described by Piaget in relation to cognitive development that I shall describe and consider the


replies latency-age children made in response to questions abouthow they experienced certain emotions.

RESPONSES

1. Syncretists

6-year-old girl (sleepy): "Like I'm moving away; I think I was insomebody else's house and I moved to my real house."

6-year-old boy (scared): "In my stomach, it hurts like somebody'sknocking at the door."

5-year-old boy (angry): "I feel mad when Billy kicks me-in myhead; it feels like flowers are in there-blue and red."

These responses reflect characteristics of what Piaget (1923)terms syncretism. "Like the dream, [syncretism] 'condenses' objectively disparate elements into a whole. Like the dream, it 'transfers,' in obedience to the association of ideas, to purely external resemblance or to punning assonance, qualities which seem rightly toapply only to one definite object. But this condensation and transference are not so absurd nor so deeply affective in character as indreams or autistic imagination" (p. 158f.).Thus, the sleepy 6-yearold's response seems understandable only if one imagines a situation: the child, put to bed in the hosts' unfamiliar home, beingawakened for the return home to her own bed. She reports the situation in response to a query about what it is like to feel sleepy.Similarly, the second response seems comprehensible only if oneremembers the common anxiety of small children which is a partof separation anxiety and is contained in the fear that they may beattacked or spirited away from home; hence, for this little boy,being scared is equivalent to a feeling in the stomach which is inturn like the situation when an unknown someone is "knocking atthe door." Further, if one interprets the colorful flowers of thethird response as analogous to "seeing stars," then this youngster,too, seems to equate the physical sensation of a kicked head withthe affect of anger. In each of these responses, the circumstanceand feeling, self and experience, are intermingled. Yet the response is delivered, apparently, with the full expectation that thelistener will understand, an expectation which Piaget (1923) notesin his discussion of the conversational monologues of young children (p.24).

2. Bystanders

5-year-old boy (sleepy): "Like you are pretty tired. My mouth goesup [like a yawn]. My legs are tired and my head-kind of pain. Myeyes go shut."


7-year-old boy (sad): "But sometimes I hold it so it doesn't comeout. You hold the tears in your eyes. You hold your tummy in andit works."

6-year-old girl (sad): "You sort of have a sad smile on your face."9-year-old boy (nervous): "When I'm moving around a lot, slipping

my foot on the floor and bringing it back. The teacher said to 'stopbeing so nervous.' "

We are here concerned with the way in which the child learns tointerpret his reactions as somehow his own. Piaget (1945) asserts:"all impressions which are internal or related to the body. . . arefelt but not connected with the body of the subject, since there isno consciousness of the ego [in the small child]. They thereforebecome external images" (p. 201). In the examples cited above, thechildren describe their feelings from the vantage point of a bystander; that is, their descriptions consist primarily of external elements which might be observed by another: "My mouth goes up... my eyes go shut. You hold tears in your eyes. You have a sadsmile on your face. I'm moving around a lot, slipping my foot onthe floor and bringing it back." It is as if the children created anobserver to watch as they assumed the physical attitude or posturethey associate with the affect. In addition, the last remark suggestshow it is that children may move from symbol to sign as the teacherassigns a conventional label to the child's "motivated" behavior.

Piaget (1945) differentiates between signs and symbols as follows: "the 'sign' is 'arbitrary' or conventional, while the symbol is'motivated,' i.e., there is resemblance between 'signifier' and 'signified.' Being arbitrary, the sign involves a social relationship ...while the motivation of the symbol. . . may be the product of individual thought" (p. 98£.). In this set of responses, however, thechildren utilize conventional words or signs, but in their search foran accurate description in very personal ways which seem morerelated to Piaget's description of the symbol.

3. Wizards

6-year-old boy (hungry): "Your stomach says, 'I want something toeat.' "

6-year-old boy (hungry): "It don't even hurt.-My brain makes mystomach hungry and that's all 'cause it's mixed up."

9-year-old girl (happy): "It feels like strings are pulling up the sidesof my mouth."

These responses are distinguished by their attempts to deal withcausality. In describing the communications between 5- to 7-yearolds, Piaget (1923) notes that the children are very infrequentlyconcerned with explanation or causality and that when they are,


their attempts are frequently descriptive or refer to psychologicalexplanation or intentions (p. 31). In the responses above, intentions are attributed to parts of the body or are perceived as outsidethe child. Thus, while the child seems to have internalized the observer, he seems not to perceive the phenomenon observed as included in his own set of intentions and feelings. He comes by hisfeelings somewhat magically: there is a Wizard within, making hisstomach speak or feel hungry, or without, "pulling the strings." Inany case, parts of the body appear to be personified, and this attribution of human characteristics to parts of the body or to "something" acting on the body would seem to be an intermediate formbetween sign and symbol as described in section 3.

4. Inner Observers

6-year-old boy (nervous): "In my head-on the top of my noselike my nose feels horrible 'cause [it] gets all shriveled up on the inside."

7-year-old boy (nervous): "Sometimes you get a headache on the inside [indicating forehead]. It kept getting hot, then cold, then medium to hot, then red hot."

8-year-old boy (scared): "I'm all shooken up and sometimes whenreal scared I get a little stomachache. And after all the air comesout, I feel better."

9-year-old boy (scared): "Inside-my chest-it feels like it was vibrating, going to explode, up by my neck."

8-year-old boy (happy): "It feels like [my stomach's] sucked in[when I laugh]."

These responses demonstrate the ability these children possess interms of self-observation and, hence, the emergence of an observing ego. In these answers self-observation is tied to explicit, andoften wonderfully graphic, descriptions of specific physical sensations. In contrast to the children previously discussed, these children clearly connect their sensations to their own bodies; they donot merely utilize external images. The elaboration of detail in thefirst two responses suggests symbolism, "the product of individualthought," according to Piaget (1945, p. 99). It is Piaget's hypothesisthat symbolism, like play, derives from the child's attempts at assimilation: "play enables the child to relive his past experiences andmakes for the satisfaction of the ego rather than for its subordination to reality. . . symbolism provides the child with the live, dynamic, individual language indispensable for the expression of hissubjective feelings, for which collective language alone is inadequate" (1945, P: 167). No one who has experienced a tachycardia


on being startled or frightened can miss the exactness of the 9year-old's description or, despite the polite ambiguity, the accuracyof the physical descriptions in the third and fifth examples. Theseexamples also illustrate how free of convention the children can bewhen asked to discuss their feelings, and thus seem closer toPiaget's notion of symbolism as a "live, dynamic, individual language."

5. Scientists

7-year-old girl (scared): "Something like you are going to start tocry." .

6-year-old boy (scared): "In my tummy-it feels like I'm about tothrow up."

ll-year-old boy (scared): "Where my heart is, I get a funny feelinglike when my foot is asleep."

These children also seem to have an internalized observing ego,but their descriptions of internal sensations are elaborated with reference to other related physical experience. These explanatory references to other experiences-"starting to cry; throwing up; whenmy foot is asleep"-convey the children's concern with being understood and, consequently, some empathy with the listener andhis experience. This capacity to "see things from the point of viewof others and to make [oneself] understood by them" was one ofthe hallmarks of adult thought, according to Piaget. It is of interestto note that these elaborations result in more poetic, more affectivelanguage. In this connection, we may review Piaget's notions (1945)about the symbol:

The symbol. . . is a "motivated" signifier, i.e., there is a resemblance of some kind between it and its signified. A metaphor, forinstance, is a symbol because there is a relationship. . . which isnot due to a social convention but directly experienced by themind of the individual. The symbol will therefore be used in "affective language," to express feelings and concrete experiences,rather than in "intellectual language" to express impersonalthoughts [p, 169].

The linkage of experiences of internal sensation suggests the titleof "scientist" for these children; the linkage of related affectssuggests the title "psychologist."

6. Psychologists

6-year-old girl (nervous): "If I didn't know what the answer was toquestion-like you're shy."


9-year-old girl (nervous): "I feel like backing away from where thescared feeling is."

9-year-old boy (sad): "In the brain-it's real drowsy and makes mesleepy."

lO-year-old boy (sad): "My stomach feels gloomy."As in section 5, the children's responses make evident their con

cern that the listener understand, but in these examples the children empathize with the feelings of others as well as with their experiences. Their reference to related affective words-shy, scared,sleepy, gloomy-perhaps represents a process described by Piaget(1945): "When there is a transfer of feeling from one object toanother, we must recognise that in addition to continuity there isconstruction of a new feeling through the integration of the oldfeeling in a new schema different from the previous one, and thataffective continuity merely results from mutual assimilation of thetwo schemas" (p. 186).

7. Analysts

7-year-old boy (sad): "Your brain always thinks of it; thinks ofwhat happened."

l O-year-old girl (scared): "I get a feeling inside of me that something is going to happen and the feeling says, 'Back off,' that I'mgoing to do something I shouldn't."

12-year-old girl (angry): "My mind just simply doesn't feel quiteright-well, I lost my self-control."

In these responses the children seem to achieve descriptions of

Table I

The Child As: Observing Ego Event Body Awarenessand Affect

I. Syncretist not. present fused fused with event2. Bystander a watching observer separated external description

fused with affect3. Wizard internalized separated internal; magical

personification explanation; fusedwith affect

4. Inner observing ego separated internal; descriptive;Observer fused with affect

5. Scientist internal; empathy separated internal; descriptive;with experience of linked with additionalother internal descriptions

6. Psychologist internal; empathy separated internal; descriptivewith feeling ofother

7. Analyst internal; as in separated internal: descriptive;4, 5, 6 "mental process"

Other Affects

linked withother affects

+


purely mental processes. The first is, for example, a beautiful description of rumination. The second describes "alarm" in very vividfashion, while the last response characterizes the frightening experience of "being beside oneself," which sometimes accompaniesrage or anger. These examples contrast with the egocentric, syncretistic thinking represented by the first responses cited. Rather,these instances demonstrate the child's capacity to analyze andrefer to the aspect of his feeling experience which makes it particular for him.

SUMMARY

9-year-old girl (happy): "It feels like I could jump into the sky realhigh and I could stay there all day 'cause I'm real light, and I couldrun a mile and never get tired and I could do anything that I wantto do."

12-year-old girl (sad): "I feel like [it] shouldn't have happened, wasall wrong and I wish it back as it was before. I feel like I can't standthe world anymore; I could die; nothing could happen that couldmake you happy."

12-year-old girl (happy): "Like flying, do anything, like everythingis being lifted up and all is okay now for the rest of my life. My feetfeel just so light, I feel like running-have to run to get it off-justjumping up and down; I feel like I have lots of energy."

In this paper, I have traced the concept of the emerging "observing ego" through selected responses from those which 5- to 12year-old children made when asked to describe their experienceand perceptions of a number of affect words. While the particularcontext suggested was evolved from a study of Piaget, other contextual frameworks might be equally appropriate. Surely, whateverthe framework within which one works, the development of thelanguage of emotion is critical for those of us engaged with emotionally disturbed or troubled children. The crucial relationship between affect and learning, so beautifully delineated by Jones(1968), clearly exists between affect and behavior generallyhence, the importance of understanding the developmental aspectsof feelings and their verbalizations. Research which attempts todemonstrate both the development of particular affective statesacross age groups and the relationship of one affect's developmentto another within an age group remains a future task, but one suggested by this work.

The above responses in essence summarize the unique sensitivityachieved by some children who were asked about their feelings.


Little in the way of structure or explication could add to the poeticquality of the responses the children actually made. These, indeed,provide the reason for this paper.

REFERENCES

FLAVELL, J. H. (1963), The Developmental Psychology ofJean Piaget. Princeton, N. J.: Van Nostrand.

JONES, R. M. (1968), Fantasy and Feeling in Education. New York: New York University Press.LEWIS, W. C., WOLMAN, R. N., & KING, M. (1971), The development of the language of emo

tions. Amer. j. Psychiat., 127: 1491-1496.------ (I 972a), The development of the language of emotions: II. Inten

tionality in the experience ofaffect.j. Genet. Psycho!., 120:303-316.------ (1972b), The development of the language of emotions: III. Type of

anxiety in the experience of affect.j. Genet. Psycho!., 120:325-342.PIAGET, J. (1923), The Language and Thought of the Child. New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1969.-- (1945), Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. New York: Norton, 1951.WOLMAN, R. N., LEWIS, W. C., & KING, M. (1971), A developmental study of the language of

emotions: conditions of emotional arousal. Child Develpm., 42:1288-1293.------ (l972a), The development of the language of emotions: 1. Theoretical

and methodological introduction. j. Genet. Psychol., 120: 167-176.------ (l972b), The development of the language of emotions: IV. Bodily

referents and the experience of affect. j. Genet. Psychol., 121:65-81.

the developmental study of the language of emotions

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