Longitudinal change and longitudinal stability of individual differences in children's emotion understanding

2012

Cognitive Development

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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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

How do use and comprehension of mental-state language relate to theory of mind in middle childhood?

2012

Cognitive Development

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“…In all, the child's comprehension of emotion is assessed across nine different components (Pons, Harris & de Rosnay, 2004). According to the hierarchical model proposed by Pons and Harris (2005), children with typical development progress through a series of landmarks in developing their emotion understanding of the nine components. The standardized Italian version of the test confirmed this hierarchical structure with few variations.…”

Section: Pre-and Post-test Measures and Scoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional state talk and emotion understanding: a training study with preschool children

2011

J. Child Lang.

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.

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“…It tests the child's comprehension of the nature, causes, and regulation of emotions across nine different components (Pons, Harris, & de Rosnay, 2004). The children were awarded a point for each of the nine components, and scores ranged from 0 to 9 (for more details about the components of emotion understanding, see Pons & Harris, 2005).…”

Section: Emotion Comprehension the Test Of Emotion Comprehension (Tec)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Language Games in Children's Understanding of Mental States: A Training Study

Brockmeier

Journal of Cognition and Development

2011

100