Developing emotional competence in pre-school children
Developing emotional competence in pre-school children

Summary/Abstract: The paradigm that gives a person the ability to adapt to the requirements of life and overcome problematic situations is the integrated functioning of his emotional, social and reasoning abilities. Unfortunately, the number of people experiencing mental, emotional and behavioral disorders just because of maladaptive reactions is growing. In the preschool institution we have a growing number of children with behavioral disorders, with socio-emotional deficiencies that pose serious problems for the educator. This research aims to test the effectiveness of a training program intended to develop the emotional competence in kindergarten middle-group children (4-5 years). The purpose of implementing the set of model activities is to develop age-specific emotional abilities and to identify the causes that have led to difficulties in their implementation. The influence of the psycho-pedagogical intervention is reflected not only in the quantitative results, but also in the quality of affective life of the pre-school children participating in the study. If this quality attribute is pursued from the first targeted behaviors (identifying the four primary emotions, recognizing and labeling their own emotions and those of the others and the emotional regulation), then one may say that the implemented model of activities has had a strong positive impact on the subjects. Thus, kindergarten middle-group children have the ability to correctly identify and name emotions of sadness, fear, anger. To correctly identify these emotions, children have learned to use partial facial expressions to generate assumptions about the emotion that is presented, to trace the physical characteristics observed in categories to name the category and to specify the behavior of others. It has been noticed that preschoolers are more specific in naming emotions with verbal labels than with facial expressions, especially for fear. Without a verbal label of emotions, many children did not realize that that behavior is causing an emotion. On the other hand, preschoolers name facial expressions with more precision than describing the causes and consequences of emotions.

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