Constructing three emotion knowledge tests from the invariant measurement approach

Background. Psychological constructionist models like the Conceptual Act Theory (CAT) postulate that complex states such as emotions are composed of basic psychological ingredients that are more clearly respected by the brain than basic emotions. The objective of this study was the construction and initial validation of Emotion Knowledge measures from the CAT frame by means of an invariant measurement approach, the Rasch Model (RM). Psychological distance theory was used to inform item generation. Methods. Three EK testsemotion vocabulary (EV), close emotional situations (CES) and far emotional situations (FES)were constructed and tested with the RM in a community sample of 100 females and 100 males (age range: 18-65), both separately and conjointly. Results. It was corroborated that data-RM fit was sufficient. Then, the effect of type of test and emotion on Rasch-modelled item difficulty was tested. Significant effects of emotion on EK item difficulty were found, but the only statistically significant difference was that between "happiness" and the remaining emotions; neither type of test, nor interaction effects on EK item difficulty were statistically significant. The testing of gender differences was carried out after corroborating that differential item functioning (DIF) would not be a plausible alternative hypothesis for the results. No statistically significant sex-related differences were found out in EV, CES, FES, or total EK. However, the sign of d indicate that female participants were consistently better than male ones, a result that will be of interest for future meta-analyses. Discussion. The three EK tests are ready to be used as components of a higher-level measurement process.Fil: Delgado, Ana R.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Prieto, Gerardo. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Burin, Debora Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; Argentin

Maternal Socialization of Children's Emotion Knowledge

The relations between family emotional expressiveness and children's emotion knowledge were examined. Participants were 258 3.5-year-old children whose emotional knowledge was assessed; mothers reported on their emotion socialization practices and mothers and children were observed during an emotion-eliciting book-reading task. It was hypothesized that positive family expressiveness would be positively related to children's emotion knowledge, whereas negative family expressiveness would have a curvilinear association which would be moderated by additional forms of emotion socialization (parental responses to children's negative emotions and parental explanations about emotions) and child gender. Results showed a curvilinear relation for positive expressiveness and emotion knowledge and no association for negative expressiveness. An interaction between positive expressiveness and negative expressiveness was significant for boys, suggesting that boys have higher emotion knowledge when positive expressiveness is high but only in homes where negative expressiveness is low. Parental responses to negative emotions and explanations of emotions were directly related to emotion knowledge, but the moderation hypotheses were not supported. Results are discussed in terms of implications for how parents can be most effective in teaching their children about emotions

The role of theory of mind, emotion knowledge and empathy in preschoolers’ disruptive behavior

Objectives : Research examining disruptive behaviors in clinical groups of preschool and school-aged children has consistently revealed significant difficulties in their emotion knowledge and empathy but intact performance in their theory-of-mind (ToM). However, it is largely not known if these difficulties in emotion knowledge and empathy as opposed to ToM are specific to extreme forms of disruption in clinical groups or rather represent broad deficiencies related to disruptive behaviors in general, including the milder levels exhibited by typically developing children. Milder disruptive behaviors (e.g., whining, arguing, rule-breaking and fighting) in peer contexts might relate to normative variations in socio-cognitive and emotional skills like ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy. To illuminate whether the same pattern of relations observed in clinical samples would arise in typical development, this study aims to examine the role of ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy in typically developing preschoolers’ disruptive behaviors.WOS:000510437900014Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072Social Sciences Citation IndexQ3 - Q4ArticleOcak2020YÖK - 2019-2

Emotion Knowledge and Relational Aggression in Preschoolers

The preschool years are an important time in a child\u27s emotional development. Children learn how to navigate peer relationships and understand the source of others\u27 emotions, one of the most important tasks of this developmental period. Deficits in emotion knowledge have been linked with increased aggressive behaviors and poor peer acceptance. This study\u27s main objective was to clarify whether emotion knowledge is related to relational aggression in young children. In addition, the role of age, sex, siblings, depressed affect, and peer acceptance and rejection was examined in the context of relational aggression. Sixty-six preschool children from ages 3 to 4 were administered Denham\u27s Affective Knowledge Test (DAKT; Denham, 1986), and both preschool teachers and children completed the Preschool Social Behavior Scale-Teacher and Peer Forms (PSBS-T; PSBS-P; Crick et al., 1997) to assess relationally-aggressive behaviors. Results of the study indicated that four-year-old children engage in more relationally-aggressive behaviors as rated by teachers than three-year-old children. In addition, relationally-aggressive preschool boys experience significantly less peer rejection than non-relationally-aggressive preschool boys. Several additional findings involving emotion knowledge, depressed affect, and peer acceptance and rejection approached significant levels

From knowledge to differentiation:Increasing emotion knowledge through an intervention increases negative emotion differentiation

Labeling emotions with a high degree of granularity appears to be beneficial for well-being. However, there are individual differences in the level of emotion differentiation, and some individuals do not appear to differentiate much between different emotions. Low differentiation is associated with maladaptive outcomes, therefore such individuals might benefit from interventions that can increase their level of emotion differentiation. To this end, we tested the effects of an emotion knowledge intervention on the level of emotion differentiation. One hundred and twenty participants were assigned to either an experimental or a control condition. Emotion differentiation was assessed with a Scenario Rating Task before and after the intervention, and at follow-up. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation increased significantly after the emotion knowledge intervention, and this increase was not observed in the control group. Positive emotion differentiation also increased slightly; however, it did not reach significance level. This finding suggests that an emotion knowledge intervention might be beneficial for increasing negative emotion differentiation and may have implications for the clinical context

Emotion Knowledge and Language Skills: Contributions to Social, Behavioral and Academic Outcomes in Kindergarteners

This study examined emotion knowledge and language skills in kindergarteners, and how these skills jointly affect children’s overall social, behavioral and academic functioning. Participants included 60 kindergarteners from a language and literacy-enhanced early childhood school, who were individually interviewed using the Kusche Affective Interview-Revised. Additionally, all participants’ expressive and receptive language skills were tested using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and the Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test (EVT). Participants’ language and emotion knowledge scores were then compared to social, behavioral and academic performance as noted in the school’s teacher-rated report card. Preliminary analyses indicated positive correlations between language skills and emotion knowledge. Additionally researchers found positive correlations between language skills and some areas of academic success, especially for expressive language skills. Some aspects of emotion knowledge were related to school success, but contrary to predictions, emotion knowledge could not predict above and beyond language skills in the academic and behavioral domain. Socioeconomic comparisons found significant multivariate differences between language skills, but only weak evidence of emotion knowledge score differences and report card differences. Findings suggest positive effects of language and literacy enhanced preschools to help close the gap between socioeconomic groups. Furthermore, due to the observed relationship between language skills and emotion knowledge, these findings support the need to control for language skills whenever studying emotion knowledge in the future

EMOTION KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE: A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF PRESCHOOL AND FIRST-GRADE GREEK STUDENTS

Even young children think about their own and others’ behaviors, including emotions. Such cognitions and emotions about self and others convey information that is crucial to social interactions and relationships. The present study aimed at exploring young children’s emotional knowledge processes, the role of gender in these processes, and their association with teacherreported early school adjustment. It also aimed at testing the validity of a model of emotional knowledge in the Greek context. Two-hundred and fifty-two preschool and first grade primary school students were interviewed with the Affect Knowledge Test (AKT). Preschool and first grade primary teachers rated children’s early school adjustment with the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30). The results highlighted the association of children’s emotion knowledge with school adjustment. A theoretical model of emotion knowledge for preschool and early primary education students is proposed

Pretend and Physical Play: Links to Preschoolers’ Affective Social Competence

This study investigated different forms of pretend and physical play as predictors of preschool children’s affective social competence (ASC). Data were collected from 122 preschool children (57 boys, 65 girls; 86 European American, 9 African American, 17 Hispanic, and 10 other ethnicity) over a 2-year period. Children participated in emotion knowledge interviews, mothers rated children’s emotion regulation skill, and observations were conducted of children’s emotional expressiveness with peers in both Years 1 and 2. Naturalistic observations of children’s peer play behavior were conducted to assess the proportion of time children spend in pretend and physical play in Year 1. Analyses revealed that sociodramatic play predicted children’s emotional expressiveness, emotion knowledge, and emotion regulation 1 year later, after controlling for Year 1 ASC skills. Rough-and-tumble play predicted children’s emotional expressiveness and emotion regulation 1 year later, whereas exercise play predicted only emotion regulation. Some associations between sociodramatic play and rough-and-tumble play and children’s ASC were moderated by gender

Objective measurement of Spanish emotion vocabulary

[EN]Current research on emotion knowledge and competence emphasises the role of language. Emotion vocabulary is one of the indicators of emotion knowledge that can be objectivelymeasured; however, the metric properties of the scores obtained in tests and tasks to measure it have seldom been adequate. In this study we designed and validated a Spanish emotion vocabulary test (MOVE) employing a corpus approach to construct cloze multiple-choice items, administered the test to a Spanish-speaking sample from two countries, Spain and Argentina, and analysed structural validity of the test items with the Rasch model measurement approach. Eighty-eight items showed adequate fit. Overall, a substantial percentage of variance was explained by a latent variable. Reliability indexes at the test, item, and person level were also adequate. As a vocabulary test, the MOVE can be used in psychological and neurological investigation, as well as in language learning research

The Development and Validation of the Emotion Knowledge and Awareness Test

The purpose of this study was to develop, test, and pilot a general outcome measurement tool that will allow educators to test young children’s knowledge of factors of emotional development: emotional identification and fluency, understanding situations where multiple emotions are present, understanding that others may feel differently in situations, and emotional regulation (CASEL, 2014). There are few assessments that reliably measure emotion knowledge in early elementary grades. The Emotion Knowledge and Awareness Test (EKAT) has been developed for kindergarten through second grade students to measure emotion awareness across two domains: knowledge and management. It was developed as a pre/posttest assessment to measure levels of emotion knowledge and strategy gains associated with social-emotional learning curricula. Practitioners will learn about the content validation processes and initial piloting of the EKAT. The EKAT development took place over four distinct phases. Phase One included item development and informal content validation with practitioners. In order to develop the items, the principal investigator trained her research team on the steps for item generation. Phase Two included content validation of the EKAT from a panel of experts in the fields of child development, psychology and education as well feedback from practitioners. The third phase included a pilot study of the EKAT with a diverse population of students throughout Western Massachusetts. The final analysis phase of the EKAT included a classical test theory analysis to eliminate items with poor discrimination and an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to measure how the items fit into the knowledge and management domains