Factor analysis accounts for most of the variance in adult ratings of concepts with adjectives. Affective reactions are present in young infants, but still to be explored is how the stable adult factor structure develops from these reactions. Three questions are investigated in this study: (1) is this factor structure present in 3- and 4-year-olds; (2) does it occur initially verbally or non-verbally; and (3) is it an age-related or a stage-related development? Nineteen subjects ranging in age from 3:0 to 5:1 years, with a mean age of 4:0, were given the task of rating concepts both verbally and non-verbally. With adults, factor analysis reliably divides scales into three factor groups: evaluation, potency, and activity. Factor analysis of the present data, however, found no structure at all, rather great variability among children in their use both of words and pictographs. Though each child must learn the adult factor structure for himself, the similarity between children's strategies for word concatenation increases with age. Appropriate use of graphic scales appears sooner than that of verbal scales, providing evidence that language is perhaps not a system separate from other cognitive systems. (CLK)