The Impact of Abuse and Learning Difficulties on Emotion Understanding in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Abstract

Children's affective experiences and cognitive abilities have an impact on emotion understanding. However, their relative contribution, as well as the possibility of an interaction between them, has rarely been examined. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of severe abuse and learning difficulties on simple and complex components of emotion understanding in late childhood and early adolescence. A total of 28 older children and young adolescents were selected for the study. Half of the participants had suffered from severe abuse, and half of these abused children additionally had learning disabilities. The remaining half of the sample had no history of abuse but were matched with the abused children on learning difficulties, age and gender. The participants' emotion understanding was assessed with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). Results showed that (a) learning difficulties but not abuse had an impact on emotion understanding, (b) there was no interaction effect of abuse and learning difficulties on emotion understanding, and (b) the observed effects of learning difficulties were most apparent for the understanding of relatively complex components of emotion and not for simple components. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.

Adaptación y Validación del Test of Emotion Comprehension en escolares cubanos

“…These results are similar to those of other studies conducted for the validation of this test in other populations (Albanese y Molina, 2008;Fidalgo, Pons, Quintanilla, 2012;Roazzi, Dias, Minervino y Pons, 2008), this could explain the non-necessary correlation between the indicators found in this study. No significant differences were observed according to sex and age, except for some aspects of the reflexive level such as the recognition of mixed emotions or emotional ambivalence, which contrasts with approaches of some authors (Pons et al, 2014). This is explained because the age range was very small, which suggests that the research should be expanded, applied in other ages within the child population.…”

“…No se presenciaron diferencias significativas de acuerdo al sexo y la edad, exceptuando algunos aspectos del nivel reflexivo como el reconocimiento de emociones mixtas o ambivalencia emocional, lo cual contrasta con planteamientos de algunos autores (Pons et al, 2014), ello se debe a que el rango de edades era muy pequeño, lo cual sugiere que debe ampliarse la investigación, aplicándose en otras edades dentro de la población infantil.…”

“…Para Pons et al (2014) los niños realizan primero una identificación de la situación, lo cual conduce al desencadenamiento de emociones de diferente valencia. Esta primera identificación y, más aún, la conciencia de la emoción suscitada llevan al niño a buscar explicaciones mediante el recuerdo de sucesos análogos o similares.…”

“…For Pons et al (2014), children perform first an identification of the situation, leading to the outbreak of emotions of different valence. This first identification and awareness of emotion take the child to seek explanations by the memory of analogous or similar events.…”

Inteligencia emocional: Su relación con el rendimiento académico en preadolescentes de la Escuela 4 de Abril, de Io ciclo, Angola

“…La adolescencia constituye una etapa de la vida donde ocurren cambios trascendentales en el desarrollo del ser humano; particularmente el desarrollo emocional arriba a un nivel culminante respecto a etapas anteriores, por lo que las personas adolescentes son capaces de comprender sus emociones y las de otras, así como regularlas (Pons, Rosnay, Bender, Doudin, Harris y Giménez, 2014). También se plantea que es un período intenso en vivencias emocionales y de gran inestabilidad en este sentido (Espín, 2013).…”