Today, emoji have become a popular option for anchoring the categories of Likert-type scales applied to not only adults but also children. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of category labeling with emoji by comparing the psychometric properties of the emoji- and verbal-anchored versions of the mathematics motivation scale applied to students aged 8-11 years (grades 3, 4, and 5). The participants of the study comprised 658 students. According to the research results, students used the upper categories of the scale more intensively in the emoji-anchored version than in the verbal-anchored one. Parallel to this, the means calculated for the emoji-anchored version were found to be significantly higher. Moreover, the results of the research revealed that the verbal-anchored scale form yielded more reliable and valid measures than the emoji-anchored version.