Emotional Words, Emotional Contexts: Investigating Emotional Valence in Children's Writing and Word Learning

There is a relationship between the emotional valence of a word and its surrounding context in adult language, and context valence predicts how well adults learn new words. We asked whether this extends to children. Using a large corpus of stories written by children (N = 103,541; ~55 million words, ages 7–13), we found a positive correlation between word and context valence (r = 0.46), which was stable across age. We then conducted a pre-registered word learning experiment investigating how emotional narrative context shapes learning of novel adjectives during independent reading. Children (N = 120, age 7–11 years, 59 girls, ethnic information not collected) read 15 novel words embedded in 30 short narratives of either neutral, negative, or positive valence. We found that children inferred word valence from narrative context, demonstrating that context valence is an effective cue for word learning. Children learned novel adjectives, and older children outperformed younger children in word recognition and valence judgment. Novel adjectives read in more emotional (positive/negative) contexts were recognised more accurately than those in neutral narratives (Odds Ratios = 1.39–1.60). We discuss how affective associations build from children's experience of words in emotional contexts, consistent with affective embodiment supporting children's learning of abstract concepts.