Abstract

This study investigated age differences in the mean-level and relationships in the development of preschoolers’ facial emotion recognition, emotion comprehension, and emotion word comprehension. One hundred and fifty-two Korean children aged 3-6 years were tested nonverbally using the facial emotion matching discrimination task, Test of Emotion Comprehension, and emotion word comprehension test. In all tasks, the children’s performance significantly increased with age, whereas gender differences were not evident. All variables were positively associated with each other, even when controlling for age. Most importantly, the correlations between the variables varied according to age. No significant correlations among the variables were found for 6-year-olds, and emotion comprehension and emotion word comprehension were more strongly related for 4-year-olds than other age groups. Facial emotion recognition consistently positively related to emotion comprehension and emotion words from 3 to 5 years of age. These results indicate that these three basic emotional competencies develop critically during early childhood, and that their relationships can differ by age.