What is behind a facial emoji? The effects of context, age, and gender on children’s understanding of emoji

This study aimed to evaluate the dimensional and semantic meanings of emoji in the absence of context as well as in a food-related context. The effects of age and gender on this perception were also identified in both situations. After a pre-selection task, 312 children (6–12 years) participated in a survey in which the dimensional and semantic meanings of emoji were evaluated in one of two situations. The dimensional meaning was reported as valence and arousal dimensions using a 100-unit visual analogue scale. The semantic meaning was measured by selecting child-friendly emotion terms in a check-all-that-apply question. The results show that the dimensional meaning of emoji was context-dependent. The evocation of a food-related context made emoji more extremely valenced, whereas no specific trend was identified for arousal. Gender and age influenced the dimensional meaning of emoji, but only for individual icons. Girls in the study rated specific neutral and negative emoji more negatively than boys. Younger children (6–8 years) perceived individual active emoji as more arousing than their older peers (9–12 years). Moreover, the semantic meaning of emoji was context-dependent, and specific groups of emoji also differed depending on the age of the participants. In this regard, secondary semantic meanings proved to be influenced by these factors, whereas main semantic meanings were stable. Multivariate analysis indicated that the associations established between emotion word categories and emoji were mainly influenced by valence and the power dimension rather than arousal.