Young Children’s Understanding of Emotions Portrayed by Puppets and Actors in ‘Sesamstraat’

Abstract

An experiment was designed to investigate whether young children understood emotions portrayed by human actors better than emotions portrayed by puppets. Children (57 four-year-olds and 56 six-year-olds) watched either an actor version or a puppet version of the same story. The actor version was played by two human actors, whereas the puppet version was played by a human actor and a puppet. Both versions were professionally compiled by the producers of the Dutch version of Sesame Street, and acted by members of the regular cast. Immediately after each target emotion, children were asked how the actor or puppet felt. Responses were scored regarding their accuracy. A large percentage of the children did not understand even the simple emotions. Differences in understanding of emotions between the puppet version and the actor version favored the actor version. Inspection of the versions suggests that these differences could be ascribed to the actor's use of facial expressions. Older children understood the emotions of both actor and puppet better than younger children did.