- Toddlerhood (1–2 years)
- Swearing lexicon is small (~7 words)
- Mostly scatological in nature
- e.g. poop, fart, butt, shit
- Start learning before they can speak it
- Start as neutral repetitions without understanding
- Begin to associate with emotion states via classical conditioning
- Adult emotional reactions to children’s swears contribute to their persistence
- Young children (3–6 years)
- Swearing lexicon expands rapidly (to ~40)
- Mostly slurs, name-calling
- By pre-school age, children use perceived difference to label others
- Start with physical, then behavioral or social differences
- e.g. fat, four-eyes → wimp, stupid, baby, weirdo, retarded, booger-eater, scaredy-cat
- In tabooness judgment task, young children judged milder taboo words more harshly than adults
- Older children (6–12 years)
- Swearing becomes more adultlike
- e.g. obscenity, sexual themes, swearing for social reasons, greater connotative uses, etc.
- As age increases, use of young, immature swearing decreases
- 11–12 year olds only share 40% of their swearing lexicon with adults
- Adults and children have different conceptions of what constitutes taboo speech