ABSTRACT
Affect and speech are two modes of expression for making known to others the contents of our feelings, beliefs, and desires. Whereas affect expression is available from the beginning of life, language has to be learned. Two questions concerning the developmental relation between these two modes of expression guided the research that is discussed in this chapter. The first began with the observation that many aspects of affect expression are already in place before language development begins and asked whether the expression of affect facilitates the emergence of speech in the second year of life. The second asked how affect and speech are integrated developmentally so that infants say words at the same time that they express positive or negative emotion. Four studies are reviewed here from a longitudinal investigation of the development of a group of 12 infants from 9 to about 30 months of age. In the first study, individual differences in the infants' age of language achievements were correlated with individual differences among them in the frequency of nonneutral affect expression and time spent in neutral affect expression. More time in neutral expression and less frequent emotional expression were associated with earlier language achievements. In the second study, different developmental trends in affect expression from 9 to 21 months were found for infants who also differed in their profiles of language development. In the third study, we looked at the words that the children said and the valence and intensity of affect that was expressed at the same time. And in the last study reviewed here, the kinds of meanings that could be attributed to the children's linguistic and emotional expressions are described (a) at the beginning of the single-word period when expression was predominantly affective, and (b) at the end of the period when the children were saying words as often as they expressed emotion. The results of these several studies are discussed in terms of the cognition required for emotional expression and language learning in early language development.
216An expression is an embodiment; something internal to the individual is made manifest and put in a public space (Taylor, 1985). Speech is a mode of expression that we, as adults, take for granted. But we have other modes of expression, and affect is one of them. Affect as a system of emotional expression is already in place when infants begin the transition to language. The research discussed in this chapter was concerned with how emotional expression relates to expression with speech as children acquire words in the second year. Whereas we already know a great deal about how language develops, we know little about its relation to emotional expression in this period of transition from infancy to language.
Our theoretical perspective on this transition departs from the commonly held view that language is acquired by children as a tool for designating objects and events, and influencing the actions of other persons. Tool use should not be central to a theory of language development any more than it is to a theory of emotions. We have proposed, instead, that children learn the forms of speech for expressing the contents of conscious states of mind and for interpreting the speech of others so as to attribute contents of mind to them (Bloom & Beckwith, 1988). Expression is central to the theory. All of the functions of language, including its instrumental and designative functions, depend on the fact that what one has in mind determines what is said and what is understood of what others say. Speech can function to influence other persons and get things done in the world only because language makes one's desires and beliefs, purposes and goals, known to others. Expression, then, makes the functions of language possible and is not, itself, just one of language's functions. This perspective on the centrality of expression has allowed us to inquire into the relation between affect and speech, the two modes of expression available to the young child, and the developments that allow such expression to occur.
The studies we have carried out concern two issues: (a) whether the expression of emotion, which is already in place, facilitates the emergence of speech, and (b) how the young infant, who is just starting to learn language, integrates speech with affect for saying words and expressing emotion together.
The first issue, whether emotional expression facilitates the emergence of speech, is relevant to the theory that language development builds on emotional expression in the second year of life. This idea is implied if not explicit in contemporary accounts of the communication of affect between infants and their caregivers in the first year (e.g., Dore, 1983; Trevarthen, 1979). The idea is not new; it has its origins in the classic phylogenetic theories of language. In one of the most influential of these, Condillac, in the 18th century, proposed that the conventional signs of speech originated when the involuntary vocal gestures that express “the passions of joy, fear, or of grief” were deliberately repeated, in the absence of their reflexive eliciting conditions, for the benefit of others (cited in 217 Aarsleff, 1976, p. 10). However, in the results of the studies reported here, we see that the emergence of speech did not build upon the infants' emotional expression.
The second issue, how infants coordinate speech and affective expression for saying words with emotion, is relevant to both linguistic and emotional development. Expression begins in earliest infancy with affect, and much of the form and content of communication between infants and their caregivers is affective in the first year of life (e.g., Emde, Gaensbauer, & Harmon, 1976; Stechler & Carpenter, 1967; Stern, 1977). Children do not learn the words of the emotions lexicon (e.g., “happy,” “mad,” “scared”) for actually naming feelings until the third year (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982; Bretherton, McNew, & Beeghly-Smith, 1981; Ridgeway, Waters, & Kuczaj, 1985). However, the studies discussed in this chapter concern the period, in the second year, when words (but not emotion words) begin to emerge for expressing the contents of mental states. This is the period that intervenes between communication with affect expression before speech in early infancy, and acquisition of the names for emotions and feelings in the third year. We have asked how the two systems of expression, speech and affect, are integrated during this time so that infants come to express their feelings together with contents of what those feelings are about.
The first of the four studies described in this chapter (and reported in full in Bloom & Capatides, 1987) tested the hypothesis that emotional expression facilitates the emergence of speech. Certain measures of infants' affect expression were correlated with the ages at which they reached several achievements in language learning: first words, a vocabulary spurt, and multiword speech. Because the infants reached these language achievements at different ages, the result of this first study was an account of individual differences among them in the relation between affect expression and age of language achievement.
The second study was concerned with developmental function in affect expression with the children equated for age, at 9, 13, 17, and 21 months (reported in full in Bloom, Beckwith, & Capatides, 1988). However, because of the stable individual differences among the infants in the relation between affect expression and age of language achievements, we also examined the developmental functions for two subgroups of infants who were early and later word learners. The result is an account of how the expression of affect and the emergence of words covaried developmentally in these children's early word learning.
The third study was concerned with how the two systems, emotional expression and speech, come together (reported in Bloom & Beckwith, 1989). The question we asked was how infants, who have been expressing emotion virtually since birth, express emotion when they are also saying words in the second year of life. This study, then, looked at the words that the children said and the valence and intensity of the affect that was expressed at the same time.
218The last study discussed in this chapter was concerned with the kinds of meanings that could be attributed to these infants' expressions (reported in full in Bloom, Beckwith, Capatides, & Hafitz, 1988). The attributions we made concerned the contents of desires and beliefs that were expressed by speech and emotional expression. The attributions were compared for the two forms of expression at the beginning of the single-word period when expression was predominantly affective, and toward the end of the period when the children were saying words as often as they expressed affect.
We were unaware of any explicit theoretical or empirical claims that might have led us to expect that expressions of the discrete emotions (e.g., anger, joy, sadness) would relate in any interesting ways to language development. For this reason, the coding scheme for affect that we devised used gradient information:(a) valence (positive, negative, neutral, mixed, and equivocal affect tone), and (b) intensity (three degrees indicating the fullness of an expression). Cues from facial expression, vocalization, and body posture were used to code affect continuously in the stream of activity as each child and mother played with groups of toys in a playroom. The result was a continuous record of changes in expressed affect and the duration of each affect expression. Thus, these studies concern the developments that occurred in expressed affect and speech in a single, essentially constant situation, beginning at 9 months of age.
