Interaction between cognition and emotion in developmental psychopathology: the role of linguistic stimuli

Investigations on emotional words demonstrated that processing emotional information in child patients with anxiety disorders diagnosed for anxiety (generalized anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder) or depression is biased towards pathology-related stimuli. Also, neuroimaging studies showed a failure of prefrontal areas in inhibiting the emotional reaction in children with bipolar disorder. Finally, despite several studies investigated memory and attention using emotional words, little is known about the development of emotional lexicon in both healthy and psychopathological children.