Palooza is a pink alien, similar in resemblance to “Itt” from “The Addams Family.” Because she comes from another planet, she speaks a totally different language than us. She uses words like “daxy” and “
Palooza is a pink alien, similar in resemblance to “Itt” from “The Addams Family.” Because she comes from another planet, she speaks a totally different language than us. She uses words like “daxy” and “torpy” to describe how she feels.
During the summer of 2016, children at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham found themselves mesmerized by Palooza and her friends — Chrysanthemum, Chromia, Wazu, and Xylobean.
These aliens are animations used by UNC psychology and neuroscience professor Kristen Lindquist and linguistics professor Misha Becker in a research study on emotion and language. The two want to know the role language plays in how 3- to 5-year-old children understand and express emotions.
“Infants can experience broad emotional states — positivity and negativity,” Lindquist explains. “But it’s not really until they’re toddlers that they begin developing emotion concepts and are actually able to use them in spoken language.” As children grow and develop, how does emotion impact language, and vice versa? Thanks to a Fostering Interdisciplinary Research Explorations (FIRE) grant, the two can learn more about that connection.
From aliens to hand puppets
Why aliens? “I was a little worried that if we showed kids pictures of humans showing different facial expressions, and we tried to teach them a new word for this emotion, they might be resistant to accepting the new word,” Becker explains. Children practice mutual exclusivity — if they already have a label for something, they’re reluctant to give a new label to that same thing.
“You show a kid a cup and a turkey baster,” Becker says. “If they don’t know what the turkey baster is, and you say, ‘Give me the zorp,’ they’ll hand you the turkey baster because they already have the word ‘cup’ in their vocabulary.” Using aliens for the study also appealed to the fun and colorful nature of children. “They capture your attention much more than pictures of posed human faces,” Lindquist adds.
Lindquist and Becker developed two different studies to run with their 3- to 5-year-old participants. The study using the aliens involved