74 children from Grades Kindergarten, 4, and 8 were interviewed and asked to produce synonyms for seven key emotions (happy, sad, afraid, mad, comfortable, proud, guilty). Children produced more synonyms in Grades 4 and 8 than in Kindergarten, and more children from Kindergarten were unable to produce synonyms than those from the higher grades. The words guilty and proud were associated with the smallest number of synonyms while the words happy and sad were associated with the largest. At the Kindergarten level only, boys produced more synonyms than girls.
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