Three meta-analyses of children's emotion knowledge and their school success

Review of the effects of social and emotional learning on mental health and academic outcomes: The role of teacher training and supportive interactions

Child and youth mental health in France has become an important public health priority. Social and emotional learning has been shown to contribute to mental health in children and adolescents. Therefore, an increasing number of interventions are being proposed in schools. However, teachers are not yet trained to develop these competencies through evidence-based interventions during their initial training. One way of increasing motivation and investment in teacher training in social and emotional learning is to increase awareness of the effects on academic outcomes. The aim of this scoping review based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses is to present the effectiveness of school-based social and emotional learning programs on mental health and academic success, while specifying the contributing processes such as motivation, teacher training, and student support. The discussion section suggests several avenues to promote the development of psychosocial competencies in school settings, notably based on teacher training.

Links between parent-child conversations about emotions and changes in children's emotion knowledge across early childhood

This study examined different sources of emotion socialization. Children (N = 256, 115 girls, 129 boys, 12 child gender not reported) and parents (62% White, 9% Black, 19% Hispanic, 3% Asian American, and 7% "Other") were recruited from Denver, Colorado. In waves 1 (Mage  = 2.45 years, SD = 0.26) and 2 (Mage  = 3.51 years, SD = 0.26), parents and children discussed wordless images of children experiencing an emotion (e.g., sad after dropping ice cream). Children's emotion knowledge was assessed at waves 2 and 3 (Mage  = 4.48 years, SD = 0.26). Structural equation modeling found concurrent and prospective relations between parents' questions, parents' emotion talk, children's emotion talk, and children's emotion knowledge, highlighting the multidimensional nature of early emotion socialization.

Impact of Innovative Emotion Training in Preschool and Kindergarten Children Aged from 3 to 6 Years

Children's emotional abilities have been shown to be related to academic performance, peer acceptance, and in-school adjustment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of innovative emotion training designed to promote the emotional abilities of 316 preschool/kindergarten children aged from 3 to 6 years old enrolled in public schools in the first three levels (L1, L2, and L3). Another objective was to examine the transfer effects on language comprehension and mathematics abilities. The emotion training (eight sessions) focused on the identification, comprehension, and expression of emotions and were co-constructed with teachers. Children were tested before and after the training on emotion, language, and mathematics skills. Results showed an improvement in emotional abilities in young children of L1 (3-4 years) and L2 (4-5 years) in the intervention group compared to those in the non-intervention group. Also, although children's emotion basic abilities were correlated with their language comprehension and mathematics abilities, the nature of this link was not demonstrated to be causal. Findings are discussed in regard to the influence of the level and in regard to links with academic variables.

A Daily Breathing Practice Bolsters Girls' Prosocial Behavior and Third and Fourth Graders' Supportive Peer Relationships: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives

In order to promote mindfulness in primary school, the Breathing Break Intervention was developed. This collection of short daily breath-based mindfulness practices was introduced to 15 teachers who delivered them up to 3 times a day to their students.

Method

In a randomized controlled trial, 146 third and fourth graders (49% female) either received the intervention (n = 81) or participated in the active wait list control group (n = 65). Students were asked to nominate prosocial peers and to report on supportive peer relationships in their classrooms before (pretest) and after (posttest) the 9 weeks of the Breathing Break Intervention, and in a follow-up 5 months later.

Results

Mixed multilevel models indicated a group × sex × posttest interaction (t(211) = 2.64, p < 0.01) suggesting that girls in the intervention group were rated to be more prosocial by their peers at posttest than at pretest and than girls in the active control group when children's age and parents' education were accounted for. Supportive peer relationships in the active control group deteriorated between pretest and posttest, which occurred immediately before the second school lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas they remained the same in the intervention group (t(223) = 2.56, p < 0.05). Both effects were not maintained at follow-up, probably due to children's irregular school attendance during the lockdown.

Conclusions

Introducing a short daily breathing practice in primary school classrooms seems to be effective in maintaining supportive peer relationships and in stimulating girls' prosocial behavior.

Preregistration

The study was preregistered at aspredicted.org (#44925).

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-023-02158-9.

Somatovisceral influences on emotional development

Frameworks of emotional development have tended to focus on how environmental factors shape children's emotion understanding. However, individual experiences of emotion represent a complex interplay between both external environmental inputs and internal somatovisceral signaling. Here, we discuss the importance of afferent signals and coordination between central and peripheral mechanisms in affective response processing. We propose that incorporating somatovisceral theories of emotions into frameworks of emotional development can inform how children understand emotions in themselves and others. We highlight promising directions for future research on emotional development incorporating this perspective, namely afferent cardiac processing and interoception, immune activation, physiological synchrony, and social touch.

Face Masks and Emotion Literacy in Preschool Children: Implications During the COVID-19 Pandemic

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, safety regulations, such as face mask wearing, have become ubiquitous. Due to such regulations, many children's interpersonal interactions occurring outside of the home now involve face coverings. The present study examined young children's ability to identify emotions in an adult model wearing a face mask. Children (n = 77) between the ages of 3 and 5 were shown 16 different graphics of a model expressing four common emotions (happy, sad, angry, scared) across four conditions: still unmasked photo, still masked photo, masked video verbally implying the emotion, masked video verbally explicitly stating the emotion. We found that children were better able to identify emotions in an unmasked model and when the masked model explicitly stated or implied the emotion. No difference was found between an unmasked model, an explicitly stated emotion, or a verbally implied emotion. Children who were older, had more exposure to adults wearing masks, and attending group care were better able to identify the emotions. No relationship was found between the type of emotion, or participant's gender or race and the ability to identify the emotions. Implications of these results are discussed.

Nonverbal emotion perception and vocabulary in late infancy

Language has been proposed as a potential mechanism for young children's developing understanding of emotion. However, much remains unknown about this relation at an individual difference level. The present study investigated 15- to 18-month-old infants' perception of emotions across multiple pairs of faces. Parents reported their child's productive vocabulary, and infants participated in a non-linguistic emotion perception task via an eye tracker. Infant vocabulary did not predict nonverbal emotion perception when accounting for infant age, gender, and general object perception ability (β = -0.15, p = .300). However, we observed a gender difference: Only girls' vocabulary scores related to nonverbal emotion perception when controlling for age and general object perception ability (β = 0.42, p = .024). Further, boys showed a stronger preference for the novel emotion face vs. girls (t(48) = 2.35, p = .023, d= 0.67). These data suggest that pathways of processing emotional information (e.g., using language vs visual information) may differ for girls and boys in late infancy.

Culture shapes preschoolers’ emotion recognition but not emotion comprehension: a cross-cultural study in Germany and Singapore

Contemporary approaches suggest that emotions are shaped by culture. Children growing up in different cultures experience culture-specific emotion socialization practices. As a result, children growing up in Western societies (e.g., US or UK) rely on explicit, semantic information, whereas children from East Asian cultures (e.g., China or Japan) are more sensitive towards implicit, contextual cues when confronted with others’ emotions. The aim of the present study was to investigate two aspects of preschoolers’ emotion understanding (emotion recognition and emotion comprehension) in a cross-cultural setting. To this end, Singaporean and German preschoolers were tested with an emotion recognition task employing European-American and East Asian child’s faces and the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons et al., 2004). In total, 129 German and Singaporean preschoolers (mean age 5.34 years) participated. Results indicate that preschoolers were able to recognize emotions of child’s faces above chance level. In line with previous findings, Singaporean preschoolers were more accurate in recognizing emotions from facial stimuli compared to German preschoolers. Accordingly, Singaporean preschoolers outperformed German preschoolers in the Recognition component of the TEC. The overall performance in TEC did not differ between the two samples. Findings of this study provide further evidence that emotion understanding is culturally shaped in accordance with culture-specific emotion socialization practices.

The Adaptive Test of Emotion Knowledge for 3-to 9-Year-Olds: Psychometric Properties and Validity

Children with an advanced knowledge of emotions are generally more socially competent, less likely to suffer from psychopathology, and more likely to succeed in school, both socially and academically. The assessment of children's emotion knowledge has thus gained importance in recent decades - both in psychiatric practice and in developmental and educational psychology. However, there is still a lack of appropriate instruments for assessing children's emotion knowledge in a performance test reliably, and for a broad age range. The Adaptive Test of Emotion Knowledge (ATEM 3-9) is a newly developed measure which encompasses seven components of emotion knowledge in 3-9-year-olds. The ATEM 3-9 is an adaptive test which uses skip and dropout rules to adjust for children's varying levels of knowledge. In addition to German, the ATEM has been translated into English and Hebrew. The German norming sample of the ATEM 3-9 comprises N = 882 (54% female, 21% bilingual) children between the ages of 3 and 9 years, who were divided into seven age groups. Test items, which are ordered according to the item response theory, showed a good fit to a seven-dimensional model reflecting the seven components. The internal consistencies of the dimensions are acceptable to good. Construct validity was examined by means of correlations with other measures of emotion knowledge, as well as measures on language skills and executive functions in a subsample. This resulted in medium size correlations in the expected directions. In addition, children with externalizing and internalizing disorders who were recruited in psychiatric in- and outpatient clinics showed deficits in various components of emotion knowledge when compared to their agemates in the norming sample. Overall, the ATEM 3-9 is well suited to measure individual components of emotion knowledge in children and to obtain a differentiated picture of the various aspects of emotion knowledge. The ATEM 3-9 thus supports the investigation of the development of social-emotional competencies in normative development (e.g., school readiness) and in social-emotional-learning interventions. Furthermore, it is suitable as an instrument for the differentiated assessment of (progress of) children's emotion knowledge in clinical child psychology and psychiatry.

Emotion knowledge, social behaviour and locomotor activity predict the mathematic performance in 706 preschool children

What are the foundational abilities that young children must develop at the beginning of school for their future academic success? Little is known about how emotion knowledge, social behaviour, and locomotor activity are associated and how these abilities may be predictors of academic-mathematic performance (less correlated with the children’s SES than pre-reading and linguistic achievement) in a large cohort of preschool children. Here we show that emotion knowledge, locomotor activity, social behaviour, and academic-mathematic performance are interrelated in 706 French preschool children aged 3 to 6. Mediation analyses reveal that the increase in academic-mathematic performance is explained by the increases in emotion knowledge and social behaviour and, in turn, children with a greater comprehension of emotions tend to have better locomotor skills and higher academic-mathematic scores. Additionally, sequential mediation analysis reveals that the increase in emotion knowledge, locomotor activity and social behaviour partially explains the increase in academic-mathematic performance. These results are discussed in relation to three possible mechanisms. Our findings are consistent with the political and scientific consensus on the importance of social-emotional abilities in the academic world at the beginning of school and suggest adding locomotor activity to these foundational abilities.

Intervention response among preschoolers with ADHD: The role of emotion understanding

Emotion recognition/understanding (ERU), which is the ability to correctly identify emotional states in others as well as one's self, plays a key role in children's social-emotional development and is often targeted in early intervention programs. Yet the extent to which young children's ERU predicts their intervention response remains unclear. The current study examined the extent to which initial levels of ERU and changes in ERU predicted intervention response to a multimodal early intervention program (Summer Treatment Program for Pre-Kindergarteners; STP-PreK). Participants included 230 young children (M_age = 4.90, 80.0% male) with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who participated in the 8-week STP-PreK. Children's ERU was measured via a standardized behavioral task. Similarly, standardized measures of academic achievement (Woodcock-Johnson-IV), executive functioning (Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders-Task), and social-emotional functioning (Challenging Situation Task) were obtained pre- and post-intervention. Parents and teachers also reported on children's behavioral functioning pre- and post-intervention. Children with better initial ERU made greater improvements in academic, executive functioning (EF), and social-emotional domains, along with decreases in inattention symptom severity. However, pre-intervention levels of ERU were not associated with improvements in parent/teacher report of hyperactivity, oppositional defiant disorder, and overall behavioral impairment. Lastly, changes in ERU only predicted improvement in EF, but not any other school readiness outcomes. We provide preliminary evidence that initial levels of ERU predict intervention response across school readiness domains in a sample of preschoolers with ADHD.

Factors Facilitating Early Emotion Understanding Development: Contributions to Individual Differences

Children's emotion understanding is crucial for healthy social and academic development. The behaviors influenced by emotion understanding in childhood have received much attention, but less focus has been placed on factors that may predict individual differences in emotion understanding, the principle issue addressed in the current review. A more thorough understanding of the developmental underpinnings of this skill may allow for better prediction of emotion understanding, and for interventions to improve emotion understanding early in development. Here, we present theoretical arguments for the substantial roles of three aspects of children's environments in development of emotion understanding: family expressiveness, discussions about emotions, and language development, and we discuss how these are interrelated. Ultimately, this may aid in predicting the effects of environmental influences on development of emotion understanding more broadly, and the mechanisms by which they do so.

Sagt das Emotionswissen von jungen Kindern ihre phonologische Bewusstheit im Entwicklungsverlauf voraus?

Zusammenfassung. Umfangreiche Forschungen bestätigen, dass eine hohe phonologische Bewusstheit jungen Kindern den Schriftspracherwerb in der Grundschule erleichtert. Unklar ist jedoch, ob ihr Emotionswissen über die bekannten Prädiktoren Alter, sozial-ökonomischer Status (SÖS), Migrationshintergrund, kognitive Fähigkeiten, Wortschatz und Selbstregulation hinaus Einfluss auf ihre spätere phonologische Bewusstheit nimmt. In einer Längsschnittuntersuchung wurde das Emotionswissen, der nonverbale IQ, das Satzverständnis und die behaviorale Selbstregulation von N = 280 Kindern ( MAlterT1 = 49.8 Monate) zu T1 erhoben. Etwa ein Jahr später wurde die phonologische Bewusstheit erfasst. Eine hierarchische Regression zeigte, dass das Emotionswissen über die Einwanderung und den SÖS der Familie und über Alter, IQ, Satzverständnis und Selbstregulation des Kindes hinaus Varianz der späteren phonologischen Bewusstheit aufklärte. Dieses Ergebnis wird in Hinblick auf die soziale Natur des frühen Lernens diskutiert.

Early Emotion Knowledge and Later Academic Achievement Among Children of Color in Historically Disinvested Neighborhoods

This study examined longitudinal relations between emotion knowledge (EK) in pre-kindergarten (pre-K; M_age  = 4.8 years) and math and reading achievement 1 and 3 years later in a sample of 1,050 primarily Black children (over half from immigrant families) living in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Participants were part of a follow-up study of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Controlling for pre-academic skills, other social-emotional skills, sociodemographic characteristics, and school intervention status, higher EK at the end of pre-K predicted higher math and reading achievement test scores in kindergarten and second grade. Moderation analyses suggest that relations were attenuated among children from immigrant families. Findings suggest the importance of enriching pre-K programs for children of color with EK-promotive interventions and strategies.

Antisocial behaviour and teacher-student relationship quality: The role of emotion-related abilities and callous-unemotional traits

BACKGROUND

Childhood antisocial behaviour has been associated with poorer teacher-student relationship (TSR) quality. It is also well-established that youth with antisocial behaviour have a range of emotion-related deficits, yet the impact of these students' emotion-related abilities on the TSR is not understood. Furthermore, the addition of the Limited Prosocial Emotions Specifier in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) indicates that understanding the role of callous-unemotional (CU) traits for youth with antisocial behaviour problems is of particular importance.

AIMS

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between antisocial behaviour difficulties and the TSR by examining the influence of emotion-related abilities and CU traits.

SAMPLE

Twelve teachers from 10 primary schools provided anonymized information on 108 children aged 6-11 years.

RESULTS

Antisocial behaviour was associated with higher teacher-student conflict (but not closeness) as well as higher emotion lability/negativity and lower emotion understanding/empathy. Emotion lability/negativity was associated with higher teacher-student conflict (but not closeness), and emotion understanding/empathy was associated with lower teacher-student conflict and higher closeness. CU traits were associated with higher teacher-student conflict and lower teacher-student closeness (controlling for antisocial behaviour more broadly). We found no evidence of a moderating effect of CU traits or emotion-related abilities on the association between antisocial behaviour and TSR quality.

CONCLUSIONS

Interventions for behaviour difficulties should consider teacher-student relationships in the classroom. Strategies which aim to improve teacher-student closeness as well as reduce teacher-student conflict may be of particular value to students with high CU traits.

Validierung des Adaptiven Tests des Emotionswissens für drei- bis neunjährige Kinder (ATEM 3 – 9)

Zusammenfassung. Das Emotionswissen von Kindern umfasst neben dem Ablesen von Emotionen aus Gesichtern anderer Menschen auch das Erkennen von externalen und internalen Ursachen von Emotionen sowie das Wissen über ihre Konsequenzen und Regulationsmöglichkeiten. Im deutschsprachigen Raum gibt es bisher kein Testverfahren, welches das Emotionswissen auf diese Weise differenziert und gleichzeitig reliabel und valide erfasst. Mit dem Adaptiven Test des Emotionswissens (ATEM) wird diese Lücke geschlossen. Der ATEM fragt in einem adaptiven Design 6 Teilaspekte des Emotionswissens ab, wobei die 32 Items in eine kinderfreundliche Geschichte eingebettet sind. Der nach der Item-Response-Theorie aufgebaute Test zeigt mit einer Gesamtstichprobe von N = 581 Kindern im Alter zwischen 3 und 9 Jahren gute psychometrische Eigenschaften. In einer Substichprobe von n = 254 Kindern im Alter zwischen 3 und 5 Jahren wurde der ATEM anhand von Korrelationen mit verschiedenen Variablen validiert. Insgesamt eignet sich der ATEM gut zur differenzierten Messung des Emotionswissens bei Kindern.

O Teste de Compreensão Emocional (TEC): Estudos Psicométricos numa População Portuguesa

Resumo O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar as vantagens e os contributos em contexto escolar do Teste de Compreensão Emocional (TEC) para a população portuguesa, desenvolvido a partir da versão brasileira, que tem por base o instrumento desenvolvido por Harris, Pons e seus colaboradores. No nosso estudo participaram 766 crianças (381 raparigas), com idades compreendidas entre 3 e 13 anos (M = 7.21, DP = 1.95), de diferentes extratos socioeconómicos. Os resultados mostram que o instrumento tem consistência interna aceitável e que é possível isolar as diferentes fases de desenvolvimento emocional propostas pelos autores. Os componentes que medem relacionam-se com diferentes variáveis importantes em contexto escolar (idade, estatuto socioeconómico, inteligência fluída), e explicam uma parte do rendimento académico e da retenção escolar.

Tuning in to Kids

Zusammenfassung. Es wird eine deutsche Version des Elterntrainings Tuning in to Kids vorgestellt. Das Training zielt über die Förderung elterlicher Strategien zur Emotionssozialisation auf eine Verbesserung kindlicher emotionaler Kompetenzen ab und kombiniert kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutische Prinzipien mit einem emotionsfokussierten Ansatz. In einer kontrollierten Pilotstudie mit Prä-Posttest-Design (TG: n = 41, KG: n = 30; Alter der Kinder: 3 – 6 Jahre) wurden durch das Training nicht-supportive emotionsbezogene Überzeugungen und Reaktionen auf kindliche Emotionen reduziert sowie supportive Überzeugungen und Reaktionen aufgebaut. Für verschiedene Maße des emotionalen Familienklimas zeigten sich tendenziell positive Effekte. Trotz der Vorläufigkeit der Befunde sprechen die Ergebnisse für eine gute Trainierbarkeit elterlicher Strategien zur Emotionssozialisation und einen stärkeren Einbezug in Prävention und Intervention.

Emotions in motion: impact of emotion understanding on children's peer action coordination

Peer action coordination has been often studied in terms of its underlying cognitive mechanisms, and little is known about its emotional processes. The aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which children's emotion understanding explains their coordination of actions with a peer in a cooperative sensorimotor problem-solving task. Sixty-eight 5- to 9-year-old children were assessed for their emotion understanding with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and for their problem-solving capacities with a sensorimotor task in an individual setting (individual sensorimotor skills) and in a cooperative setting (peer action coordination). The results showed that higher levels of emotion understanding significantly explained greater peer action coordination, even when controlling for age, gender and the child's individual sensorimotor skills. The findings point to the existence of emotional mechanisms - more specifically the role of emotion understanding - underlying successful coordination of actions in peer interaction. Theoretical and educational implications of having emotion understanding abilities for coordinating actions with others are discussed.

Einfluss der Aufgabenstellung und des Wortschatzes auf die Emotionserkennung bei Drei- bis Fünfjährigen

Zusammenfassung. Diese Studie untersucht Altersunterschiede in den Fähigkeiten zur Emotionserkennung bei Kindergartenkindern und prüft, inwiefern sich die Aufgabenstellung und der Wortschatz auf diese Aspekte des Emotionswissens auswirken. Hierfür wurde die Fähigkeit zum Benennen und Erkennen von Emotionen anhand von Fotos und vorgegebenen Situationen bei N=170 Drei- bis Fünfjährigen (n=86 Mädchen) mit dem EMK 3 – 6 und der Wortschatz mit dem SET 3 – 5 erfasst. Es wurde ein signifikanter Effekt des Alters und der Aufgabenstellung festgestellt. Der stärkste Zuwachs in der Emotionserkennung zeigte sich in allen Aufgaben im Alter zwischen drei und vier Jahren. Die Erkennungsleistung fiel für Fotos am genauesten aus, am schwersten fiel es Kindern, nach vorgegebenen Situationen den passenden Gesichtsausdruck abzuleiten. Der Wortschatz beeinflusste die Leistungen im Benennen, jedoch nicht im Erkennen von Basisemotionen. Die Ergebnisse lassen sich in die aktuelle Forschung integrieren und liefern wichtige Hinweise für die Diagnostik und Förderung des Emotionswissens.

Self-Regulation Mitigates the Association between Household Chaos and Children's Behavior Problems

Given the potential negative effects that early childhood behavioral problems have on later development, it is important to elucidate risk and protective factors. This study examined household chaos as a predictor of externalizing and internalizing problems among young children from low-income families. Additionally, self-regulation was examined as a moderator of the association between chaos and behavior problems. One hundred young adult mother-toddler dyads participated. Moderation analyses indicated that self-regulation buffered the association between household chaos and child behavior problems. Specifically, greater household chaos was associated with more behavior problems, but only among children with poorer self-regulation. Notably, this pattern was observed for both externalizing and internalizing problems. These findings suggest that early interventions targeting young children's self-regulation skills could help prevent behavior problems among children living in chaotic home environments.

Native-born German and immigrant children's development of emotion knowledge: A latent growth curve analysis

Young children in immigrant families tend to face more challenges and can often call upon fewer resources than their native-born peers. This situation adversely affects their social-emotional development. In this study, the development of emotion knowledge of 576 immigrant and native-born German children, aged 3-6 years, was compared at three time points over a 12-month period by means of a latent growth curve analysis. Language abilities and behavioural self-regulation were examined as mediators of the relation between immigration background and emotion knowledge. The immigrant children showed less emotion knowledge than did their native-born peers at each point of measurement. These effects were partially mediated by their behavioural self-regulation and their language abilities. How behavioural self-regulation and language abilities affect the development of emotion knowledge and what this effect means for interventions are discussed. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Emotion knowledge develops rapidly between the ages of three and six. Emotion knowledge develops similarly in different cultures. What does this study adds? This study compares the development of emotion knowledge between immigrant children and native-born children. It includes language skills as mediator on the development of emotion knowledge. It also includes behavioural self-regulation as mediator on the development of emotion knowledge.