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We investigated whether conversational intervention focused on emotions could promote the development of emotion comprehension (EC), theory of mind (ToM), and prosocial orientation in preschoolers. Seventy-five 4-to 5-year-old children (M age at pre-test: 5 years and 1 month; standard deviation = 6.83 months), assigned to experimental and control conditions, were pre-and post-tested for verbal ability, EC, falsebelief understanding, and prosocial orientation. Over a 6-week intervention, all children were presented with brief illustrated scenarios based on emotional scripts. The training group was then involved in conversations about the nature, causes, and regulation of emotion whereas the control group engaged in free play, where conversation was minimized. The training group outperformed the control group in EC and prosocial orientation, even after controlling for gains in verbal ability whereas no differences were found for children's false-belief understanding. The positive effect remained stable over time. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.

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a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c tThis study investigates the relationship between mental-state language and theory of mind in primary school children. The participants were 110 primary school students (mean age = 9 years and 7 months; SD = 12.7 months). They were evenly divided by gender and belonged to two age groups (8-and 10-year-olds). Linguistic, metacognitive and cognitive measures were used to assess the following competencies: verbal ability, use of mental-state terms, understanding of metacognitive language, understanding of second-order false beliefs, and emotion comprehension. Correlations between children' use of mental-state language and their performance on theory-of-mind tasks were moderate, whereas correlations between children's comprehension of such language and ToM abilities were high. In addition, regression analyses showed that comprehension of metacognitive language was the variable which best explained children's performance on both false belief tasks and an emotion comprehension test when verbal ability and age were controlled for.

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Recent years have seen the development and implementation of a range of training programs aimed at improving children's socio‐emotional skills. Nevertheless, few studies have been conducted with toddlers attending nursery school. In this study, we adopted observational and experimental paradigms to examine the efficacy of an intervention based on conversing about emotions with small groups of 2‐ to 3‐year‐old children. The intervention was designed to promote toddlers' mental‐state talk, emotion understanding (EU), and prosocial behavior. The training group significantly outperformed the control group in the use of mental‐state language, especially emotional‐state lexicon, EU, and prosocial behavior toward peers. There was also a significant Group × Age interaction, with the older training group participants displaying greater gains in EU than the younger ones. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The present study investigates whether training preschool children in the active use of emotional state talk plays a significant role in bringing about greater understanding of emotion terms and improved emotion comprehension. Participants were 100 preschool children (M=52 months; SD=9·9; range: 35–70 months), randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. They were pre- and post-tested to assess their language comprehension, metacognitive language comprehension and emotion understanding. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During the intervention phase, the children were read stories enriched with emotional lexicon. After listening to the stories, children in the experimental group took part in conversational language games designed to stimulate use of the selected emotional terms. In contrast, the control group children did not take part in any special linguistic activities after the story readings. Analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the understanding of inner state language and in the comprehension of emotion.