Developmental characteristics in judgments of emotion from nonverbal vocal cues

In an exploratory study on the developmental trends in judgments of emotion from nonverbal vocal cues, content free speech tapes designed to express one of the four emotions of happiness, surprise, sadness, and anger were presented to 47 American and 56 Japanese children, ages 4 through 9. The children indicated which emotion they thought was expressed by selecting a color photograph depicting one of the four emotions from a small group of photographs. Four- and 5-year-old American children were able to identify the emotion surprise, while American children 6 through 9 correctly identified all four emotions. Four- and 5-year-old Japanese children, on the other hand, were able to identify both surprise and sadness, while 6-year-olds correctly identified happiness, surprise, and sadness. Japanese children aged 7 through 9 were able to identify all four emotions. The results supported the concept of increasing decoding ability with increasing age across cultures, but also provided evidence for culture bound differences in growth of nonverbal emotional sensitivity