Department of Linguistics.
Department of Education and Psychology.
Emotion. 2012 Jun;12(3):503-514. doi: 10.1037/a0026320. Epub 2011 Dec 12.
Research on children's emotional competence has received considerable attention in the last decade, including the role of language. Language competence (LC) and emotional competence (EC) comprise multiple components. These components and their specific interrelations have not been studied sufficiently. In our study, we examined relations between multiple components of LC and EC in a sample of 210 school-age children. Five measures represented LC: receptive vocabulary, verbal fluency, literacy, narrative structure, and the narrative use of evaluative devices. Four measures represented EC: expressive emotion vocabulary, declarative emotion knowledge, awareness of mixed emotions, and facial emotion recognition. Results showed strong positive correlations between LC and EC ranging between r = .12 and r = .45. In particular, receptive vocabulary and literacy were closely related to emotion knowledge and awareness of mixed emotions. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that there is a common general ability factor for LC and EC. We discuss why receptive vocabulary and literacy might be so strongly related to emotion knowledge in school-age children. Our findings have implications for developmental psychologists, educational research, and speech-language pathologists.
在过去的十年中，儿童情绪能力的研究受到了相当多的关注，包括语言的作用。语言能力（LC）和情绪能力（EC）包含多个组成部分。这些组成部分及其特定的相互关系尚未得到充分研究。在我们的研究中，我们在 210 名学龄儿童样本中研究了 LC 和 EC 的多个组成部分之间的关系。五种措施代表 LC：接受性词汇、言语流畅性、读写能力、叙事结构和叙事中使用评价手段。四项措施代表 EC：表达性情绪词汇、陈述性情绪知识、混合情绪意识和面部情绪识别。结果表明，LC 和 EC 之间存在着从 r =.12 到 r =.45 的强正相关。特别是，接受性词汇和读写能力与情绪知识和混合情绪意识密切相关。验证性因素分析表明，LC 和 EC 之间存在一个共同的一般能力因素。我们讨论了为什么在学龄儿童中，接受性词汇和读写能力与情绪知识的关系如此密切。我们的发现对发展心理学家、教育研究和言语语言病理学家都有启示。
