Differences in young children's emotional valence ratings of 180 stimuli

Words and pictures are often used as stimuli in studies of investigate relations between emotion and cognition. Selecting controlled stimuli for experimental design in this area represents a crucial issue. Only few standardized databases of pictures or words are available for children. None compile at the same time ratings for both lexical and visual stimuli. The present study provides a French child database for a corpus of 180 stimuli (90 words, 90 pictures, 90 combined words-pictures). These stimuli were rated on emotional valence (emotional: negative, positive, and non-emotional: neutral) by 178 French children differing in age (4, 5 and 6-year-old) and gender (boys, girls). Results showed age and gender differences in the children's ratings. With increase of age, the stimuli rated as positive decreased, and the stimuli rated as neutral increased. We found gender related differences in the valence ratings, 5 and 6-year-old girls shown more neutral ratings than did boys. We observed a significant difference in ratings between stimulus modalities. Children were more accurate while rating words and pictures than combined words-pictures in each age group and gender. The norms and the set of words and pictures are available in OSF (Center for Open Science), https://osf.io/zcge3/. •Preschoolers are influenced by positive bias while rating emotional valence of stimuli.•This positive bias decreases as children get older around 6-year-old.•Girls rate stimuli as neutral at a younger age than boys.•Boys rate more stimuli as positive than girls.