Affective Norms for 720 French words rated by children and adolescents (FANchild): Children’s affective norms for French words

This study provides norms of valence and arousal for a large corpus of French words (N = 720) rated by 674 French children (aged 7, 9 and 11) and 234 adolescents (aged 13). The ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). Because it combines evaluations of arousal and valence and includes ratings provided by 7-, 9-, 11- and 13-year-old children, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. Good response reliability was observed in each of the four age groups. Comparing children and adolescents evaluations revealed age differences in both valence and arousal ratings. The perception of the emotional content of a word changes with age and is partly linked to sex. This age- and sex-related database will enable French-speaking researchers to study how the character of emotional words influences their cognitive processing and how this influence evolves with age. FAN child is available as an online downloadable supplement to this article