Children's understanding of facial expression of emotion: III. Adults' categorical and dimensional responses to children's drawings.

49 adult subjects responded to 37 children's drawings of six emotions (happy, sad, angry, afraid, surprised, and disgusted) by naming the emotion depicted and by identifying the pleasantness and arousal status of each drawing. Various analyses indicated that assignment to categories could be predicted on the basis of ratings of pleasantness and arousal (the two key dimensions of a bipolar affect space). Data support the contention that emotional responses should not be assessed solely on the basis of literal accuracy but should rather be described in terms of their location in affect space.