Features Of Pupils Recognition Of Emotional Expressions And Their Connection With The Mastery Of Emotional Words

As the external performance of emotion, expressions are divided into facial expression, body expressions and vocal expressions. As an important part of emotional competence as well as one of the most important social skills, Children's ability to recognize expressions reflects their ability to infer the internal psychological state of others.So far studies on the recognition of emotional expressions have focused on facial expressions, body expressions and vocal expressions being paid less attention. Although most information is conveyed by facial expressions, body and vocal expressions, equally important in identifying others'emotion quickly and accurately, are not to be ignored in researches. This author investigates primary-school-students'competence in recognizing four basic emotions (joy, anger, sadness, fear) at three levels (strong, middle, weak) in facial, body and vocal expressions. After studying their recognition features, the tendency in such competence development, and the connection between such features and the mastery of emotional words, she draws the following conclusion:1. Children's competence in recognizing expressions gradually improves with ages and is not obviously influenced by gender differences. In terms of the total score, pupils in Grade Four and Grade Six get significantly higher score then those in Grade Two.2. Of facial, body and vocal expressions, the average accuracy in facial and body expressions recognition is higher than vocal expressions.3. The scores of emotional expression recognition are significantly different in high and low strength levels, not in the middle strength level.4. Emotional vocabulary expands gradually with the pupils'ages. And girls'emotional vocabulary is significantly greater than boys'. 5. Significant positive correlation exists between emotional vocabulary and the scores of the competence in recognizing emotional expressions, which means that pupils'such competence can be predicted according to their mastery of emotional words.