The Development of Emotional Literacy on Children : Focusing on Emotional Expressions

児童を対象とした感情リテラシー研究では，年齢が上がるにつれて多くの感情ボキャブラリーを身につけるだけでなく，多様な表現で感情を表出することが示唆されてきた。しかし，年齢との関係も明確でないことや，対人場面を設定して，ポジティブな感情を喚起する場面やネガティブな感情を喚起する場面において，子ども達の感情表現が異なるのかを検討した研究はない。そのため本研究は，小学校 1～6年生の児童 513名を対象に，学年や性差，さらには状況（ネガティブな感情喚起，ポジティブな感情喚起）によって，子ども達の感情表現（感情ボキャブラリー，行動・状況への言及，欲求や要求表現，疑問表現）の数が異なるのかを明らかにした。その結果から，女児の方が男児よりもどのような感情表現でも言及数が多かったこと，1年生の言及数が他の学年と比較して少ないこと，2年生以降は感情の数自体は増えないが，5年生では疑問表現が多いなど学年によって感情の表現方法が異なることがわかった。さらに，ネガティブな状況ではポジティブな状況よりも全体的な言及数が多いことが明らかとなり，感情リテラシーについて興味深い知見を得ることができた。今後，なぜそのような結果になるのか考察を深める研究を重ねる必要がある。Studies of emotional literacy on children have suggested that children not only acquire a great deal of emotional vocabulary as they grow older, but they also express their emotions with a diversity of expressions. However, the correlation with age is not clear and there have been little studies that have examined whether children\u27s emotional expressions differ assuming an interpersonal situation in scenarios which arouse positive emotions and scenarios which arouse negative emotions. Accordingly, this study on 513 elementary school children from the first to sixth grade revealed that the number of children\u27s emotional expressions（emotional vocabulary, behavior and references to the situation, expressions of desire or demand, and expressions as questions）differs depending on the child\u27s year in school, gender, and even the situation. As a result, it was found that girls made more references to emotions for any kind of emotional expression than boys, the number of references by first graders was lower compared to any other grade, and moreover, while the number of emotions themselves do not grow from the second grade onward, there were differences in the way emotions were expressed depending on the grade of the child, such as fifth graders often expressing questions. Additionally, it was revealed that the total number of references to emotion were larger under negative circumstances than positive circumstances, allowing for some interesting insights regarding emotional literacy. There is a need moving forward to accumulate more research to further the discussion on why such results were obtained