The Emotional Content of Children's Writing: A Data-Driven Approach
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| Title: | The Emotional Content of Children's Writing: A Data-Driven Approach |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Yuzhen Dong (ORCID |
| Source: | Cognitive Science. 2024 48(3). |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 20 |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Children, Early Adolescents, Childrens Writing, Creative Writing, Psychological Patterns, Emotional Development, Gender Differences, Self Expression |
| Geographic Terms: | United Kingdom |
| DOI: | 10.1111/cogs.13423 |
| ISSN: | 0364-0213 1551-6709 |
| Abstract: | Emotion is closely associated with language, but we know very little about how children express emotion in their own writing. We used a large-scale, cross-sectional, and data-driven approach to investigate emotional expression via writing in children of different ages, and whether it varies for boys and girls. We first used a lexicon-based bag-of-words approach to identify emotional content in a large corpus of stories (N>100,000) written by 7- to 13-year-old children. Generalized Additive Models were then used to model changes in sentiment across age and gender. Two other machine learning approaches (BERT and TextBlob) validated and extended these analyses, converging on the finding that positive sentiments in children's writing decrease with age. These findings echo reports from previous studies showing a decrease in mood and an increased use of negative emotion words with age. We also found that stories by girls contained more positive sentiments than stories by boys. Our study shows the utility of large-scale data-driven approaches to reveal the content and nature of children's writing. Future experimental work should build on these observations to understand the likely complex relationships between written language and emotion, and how these change over development. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2024 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1418229 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| Abstract: | Emotion is closely associated with language, but we know very little about how children express emotion in their own writing. We used a large-scale, cross-sectional, and data-driven approach to investigate emotional expression via writing in children of different ages, and whether it varies for boys and girls. We first used a lexicon-based bag-of-words approach to identify emotional content in a large corpus of stories (N>100,000) written by 7- to 13-year-old children. Generalized Additive Models were then used to model changes in sentiment across age and gender. Two other machine learning approaches (BERT and TextBlob) validated and extended these analyses, converging on the finding that positive sentiments in children's writing decrease with age. These findings echo reports from previous studies showing a decrease in mood and an increased use of negative emotion words with age. We also found that stories by girls contained more positive sentiments than stories by boys. Our study shows the utility of large-scale data-driven approaches to reveal the content and nature of children's writing. Future experimental work should build on these observations to understand the likely complex relationships between written language and emotion, and how these change over development. |
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| ISSN: | 0364-0213 1551-6709 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/cogs.13423 |
