RESUMO
Children's emotional abilities have been shown to be related to academic performance, peer acceptance, and in-school adjustment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of innovative emotion training designed to promote the emotional abilities of 316 preschool/kindergarten children aged from 3 to 6 years old enrolled in public schools in the first three levels (L1, L2, and L3). Another objective was to examine the transfer effects on language comprehension and mathematics abilities. The emotion training (eight sessions) focused on the identification, comprehension, and expression of emotions and were co-constructed with teachers. Children were tested before and after the training on emotion, language, and mathematics skills. Results showed an improvement in emotional abilities in young children of L1 (3-4 years) and L2 (4-5 years) in the intervention group compared to those in the non-intervention group. Also, although children's emotion basic abilities were correlated with their language comprehension and mathematics abilities, the nature of this link was not demonstrated to be causal. Findings are discussed in regard to the influence of the level and in regard to links with academic variables.
RESUMO
What are the foundational abilities that young children must develop at the beginning of school for their future academic success? Little is known about how emotion knowledge, social behaviour, and locomotor activity are associated and how these abilities may be predictors of academic-mathematic performance (less correlated with the children's SES than pre-reading and linguistic achievement) in a large cohort of preschool children. Here we show that emotion knowledge, locomotor activity, social behaviour, and academic-mathematic performance are interrelated in 706 French preschool children aged 3 to 6. Mediation analyses reveal that the increase in academic-mathematic performance is explained by the increases in emotion knowledge and social behaviour and, in turn, children with a greater comprehension of emotions tend to have better locomotor skills and higher academic-mathematic scores. Additionally, sequential mediation analysis reveals that the increase in emotion knowledge, locomotor activity and social behaviour partially explains the increase in academic-mathematic performance. These results are discussed in relation to three possible mechanisms. Our findings are consistent with the political and scientific consensus on the importance of social-emotional abilities in the academic world at the beginning of school and suggest adding locomotor activity to these foundational abilities.