Examining Heterogeneity in the Impacts of Socio-Emotional Curricula in Preschool: A Quantile Treatment Effect Approach

We examine treatment effect heterogeneity using data from the Head Start CARES study, in which a sample of preschool centers was randomly assigned to either one of three curricula interventions targeting socio-emotional (SE) skills (i.e., emotional knowledge, problem-solving skills, and executive functions) or to continue using their “business-as-usual” curriculum. Most existing research estimates only mean differences between treatment and control groups, and uses simple subgroup analyses to assess treatment heterogeneity, which may overlook important variation in treatment effects across the ex post outcome distribution. We use quantile treatment effects analyses to understand the impacts of these curricular interventions at various parts of the outcome distribution, from the 1st percentile to the 99th percentile, to understand who benefits most from SE curricula interventions. Results show positive impacts of the curricula interventions on emotional knowledge and problem-solving skills, but not equally across the full skill distribution. Children in the upper half of the emotional knowledge distribution and at the higher end of the problem-solving skills distribution gain more from the curricula. As in the study’s original mean-comparison analyses, we find no impacts on children’s executive function skills at any point in the skills distribution. Our findings add to the growing literature on the differential effects of curricula interventions for preschool programs operating at scale. Importantly, it provides the first evidence for the effects of SE curricula interventions on SE outcomes across children’s outcome skill levels. We discuss implications for early education programs for children with different school readiness skills.

The Role of Emotional and Meta-Emotional Intelligence in Pre-adolescents’ Well-Being and Sociometric Status

The study examined the relationships among emotional and meta-emotional intelligence, well-being, and sociometric status in 105 pre-adolescents. Emotional and meta-emotional intelligence were measured using the Intelligenza Emotiva: Abilità, Credenze e Concetto di Sé Meta-Emotivo (IE-ACCME) test (D’Amico, 2013), allowing to measure ability emotional intelligence (EI), emotional self-concept, meta-emotional knowledge, meta-emotional ability in self-evaluation, and meta-emotional beliefs. Meta-emotional dimensions refer to the awareness of individuals about their emotional abilities and to their beliefs about the functioning of emotions in everyday life. Eudemonic well-being and sociometric status were, respectively, measured using the well-known Psychological Well-Being (PWB) scale by Ryff’s (1989) and registering the levels of acceptance/rejection from peers (Moreno, 1960). Results demonstrated that: pre-adolescents’ meta-emotional beliefs are positively associated to eudemonic well-being: pre-adolescents with higher levels of ability EI, meta-emotional knowledge and meta-emotional self-evaluation are more accepted by others while those that overestimate their emotional abilities are more refused by peers. These results evidence that meta-emotional variables may play a crucial role in well-being and sociometric status, encouraging future studies on this issue.

Charged With a Crime: The Neuronal Signature of Processing Negatively Evaluated Faces Under Different Attentional Conditions

Our brains rapidly respond to human faces and can differentiate between many identities, retrieving rich semantic emotional-knowledge information. Studies provide a mixed picture of how such information affects event-related potentials (ERPs). We systematically examined the effect of feature-based attention on ERP modulations to briefly presented faces of individuals associated with a crime. The tasks required participants ( N = 40 adults) to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the age of the face, or emotional information associated with the face. Negative faces amplified the N170 ERP component during all tasks, whereas the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components were increased only when the emotional information was attended to. These findings suggest that during early configural analyses (N170), evaluative information potentiates face processing regardless of feature-based attention. During intermediate, only partially resource-dependent, processing stages (EPN) and late stages of elaborate stimulus processing (LPP), attention to the acquired emotional information is necessary for amplified processing of negatively evaluated faces.

A Cluster Randomized Trial of Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS®) With Swedish Preschool Children

The preschool edition of Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS®) is a school-based, teacher implemented universal intervention developed in the United States designed to promote social emotional competence (SEC) in children as a foundation for improved mental health. PATHS is delivered as a curriculum and it is based on theories and research regarding SEC, brain development, and optimal school environments. A majority of children in Sweden attend preschool, which is government-subsidized and follows a national curriculum focusing on both academic and social emotional learning. However, there is not so much focus on formal instruction nor manual-based lessons. The purpose of this study was to assess the short-term (pre- to post-test) effects of PATHS in the Swedish preschool setting. Using a two-wave cluster randomized trial with multi-method and informant assessment (N = 285 4 and 5-year-old Swedish children; n = 145 wait-list control; n = 140 intervention; K = 26 preschools; k = 13 intervention; k = 13 control) we assessed changes in child emotional knowledge, emotional awareness, social problem solving, prosocial play, inhibitory control, and working memory using structural equation modeling (SEM). We included schools with at least one classroom of 4–5-year-old children from three municipalities. We excluded open preschools, parent cooperative preschools, and family day homes. After random assignment, schools were informed of condition assignment. Research team members were not blind to assignment. We hypothesized that relative to children in control schools, children in intervention schools would evidence improvements in social emotional competence as well as other outcomes. Children in PATHS, relative to children in the control, evidenced improvements in working memory and prosocial play, but also showed an increase in hyperactive behaviors. Girls in PATHS, relative to girls in the control, showed improvement in emotional knowledge and reduced anxiety. These results are considered in light of efforts to promote positive development and mental health. The trial registration number at ClinicalTrials.gov is NCT04512157. Main funding was from Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, the Swedish Research Council, Formas, and VINNOVA (dnr: 259-2012-71).

THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SOME MAIN CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONALIZATION

The article presents the results of the theoretical and comparative analysis of the scientific psychological and pedagogical literature on the problem of studying the main approaches to the operationalization of emotional intelligence. In particular, a brief description of the main components of the most well-known methods of measuring emotional intelligence is provided: the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test developed by J. Mayer, P. Salovey and D. Caruso, the self-report tests “Emotional Quotient Inventory” by R. Bar-On and N. Schutte with colleagues’s Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test, D. Gowlman’s Emotional Competence Inventory, K. Izard’s Emotional Knowledge Test, R. Cooper’s “EQMap” for interpersonal success model, K. Petrides and E. Furnham’s “Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire” test, N. Hall’s method of assessing emotional intelligence, D. Lusin’s “EmIn” questionnaire, etc. The relevance of the study of the main aspects of methods of measuring emotional intelligence is due to the need to clarify the structure of this phenomenon and include it in the system of personal characteristics, as well as the influence of ambiguity of the role of emotional intelligence in educational activities. Based on the comparative characteristics of the main components of the most famous methods of measuring emotional intelligence, an attempt was made to conceptualize the main approaches to its operationalization. Emphasis, in particular, is made on the comparison of the main criteria by the differentiation of emotional intelligence as a trait and emotional intelligence as ability. The results of the analysis are important for further studies of this phenomenon. As the analysis of scientific and psychological approaches to the problem of operationalization of emotional intelligence has shown, there is a need to personalize tests of emotional intelligence in accordance with students’ requests and their problems, to study the features of intercultural validity of emotional intelligence. A promising area of ​​study of emotional intelligence is also the study of its relationship with metacognitive strategies. In particular, the theoretical-methodological and empirical principles of studying emotional intelligence in the context of metacognitive monitoring of students’ learning activities are relevant.

Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Experiences with Residential Schools and Sixties’ Scoop, and their Impact on Emotional Knowledge for Pre-service Teachers

The purpose of this 2019-2020 exploratory study is to examine pre-service teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of Indigenous Peoples and how emotional knowledge could efficiently integrate this sensitive aspect of Canadian history into the B.Ed. Program. Shen et al. (2009) state that emotions improve learning and facilitate retention in long-term memory. Could emotional knowledge be a way of integrating Indigenous knowledge in the Bachelor of Education programs? Could Indigenous experiences with Indigenous Peoples make a difference in the perception of Indigenous Peoples in pre-service teachers? For this study, the sample available to the researcher consisted of 22 pre-service teacher students. The research instruments were a questionnaire about pre-service teachers’ knowledge of Blanket Exercises, Residential Schools, and Sixties’ Scoop, and reflection papers on the same topics. The results show that 72% of Canadian pre-service teachers, who attended elementary and secondary schools, had some, very little or no knowledge of these topics before the former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, apologized to former students of Residential Schools for the harm inflicted to them. After listening to Indigenous Survivors and being part of Blanket Exercises, pre-service teachers’ perception of Indigenous Peoples changed in a range of 26% to 100%.

Creating Communicative Space and Textual Reality via Emotiogenic Means in Fictional Discourse

The article focuses on the strategies of reconstructing communicative space between the author and reader as well as forecasting the emotional impact on the reader through transforming textual reality. The emotiogenic characteristics of fictional discourse provide the emotional perception of literary texts since emotions are central to the experience of literary narrative fiction. Such a perception is made possible by the identification, comprehension, and interpretation of the emotionally significant textual components of different types. The authors of the article have classified them as the following: graphical and visual, punctuation, and semantic-stylistic ones. These means, found in the postmodern novels by Salman Rushdie, Tahereh Mafi, Marina Lewycka, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alexandar Hemon, and Stephen King, have been analysed to explicate the character of the phenomenon of emotiogenic fictional narratives. The emotiogenic means in the selected novels are exploited by the writers of different ethnic affiliations that can be resulted from their multicultural experience. The superimposition of some means is explained by their semantic relationship. The article tests a hypothesis that the cognitive architecture of the emotiogenic means is determined by an emotional situation reflected in a literary text that appears to be a special code through which readers interpret their emotional and evaluative meanings. The indicators of the text’s emotionality occur to be signs of the textual representation of emotional knowledge. This study contributes to the investigation of the emotiogenic means of creating communicative space which are considered those discursive expressive elements that affect the perception of textual reality.

From emotions to meaning: Romantic love and sexuality integrated and directed according to values

In order to understand the transition from a life driven by emotions and desires (with particular attention to sexual ones) to a life driven by projects and values, we will use the frameworks of interpersonal motivational systems (IMSs), of which the sexuality is part, and of metacognitive functioning that allows for emotional knowledge, understanding and regulation. We will provide a central role to consciousness, as a uniquely human quality, which allows the development of motivations and intentions not otherwise replicable in the rest of the animal world and which permits us to guide our behaviors by choosing which motivational system to support, contain or manage and, above all, why.

The Association Between Reading and Emotional Development: A Systematic Review

Reading practice is associated with numerous psychological benefits. However, its influence over individual emotional dimensions has generally been underestimated by research. Only recently has it been recognized across different developmental stages but evidence is still scarce. The aim of this systematic review is to shed light over the association between reading and the several (and sometimes hardly distinguishable) socio-emotional constructs that we have identified in literature: interpersonal skills and prosocial behavior; emotional and behavioral symptoms; emotional regulation and expression; empathy and theory of mind; emotional knowledge and comprehension; and emotional responses. A total of 50 studies were analyzed, including all age groups, various settings, research drawings, and different emotional constructs in order to create a comprehensive view of the association between reading and emotions. Results show that overall reading practice has a positive impact on socio-emotional development, whatever its declination, regardless of age, gender or setting of implementation.