Test of Emotion Comprehension

Education plays a central role in the development of individuals and society, and in fulfilling this role, the intersection of two critical disciplines-Science Education and Psychological Counseling and Guidance Discipline is becoming increasingly important. This book aims to provide an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together current research and innovative approaches in these two fundamental fields. In today's world, students are expected not only to be equipped with academic knowledge but also to possess 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and psychological resilience. While science education undertakes the mission of understanding nature and developing scientific literacy, counseling and guidance discipline makes vital contributions to this process by supporting students' social-emotional development, offering stress management strategies, and promoting inclusive learning environments. This book consists of carefully selected chapters representing current scientific research from both fields. The primary aim of the book is to provide academics, teachers, counselors, and graduate students in related fields with a rich and comprehensive resource that transcends the boundaries of their own disciplines. It is hoped that these studies will both shed light on future research in the fields of science and psychological counseling and guidance discipline and provide practitioners with practical, evidence-based information that they can use in their classrooms and counseling processes. We thank all the authors and researchers who contributed to this work and hope that it will make a valuable contribution to the literature of educational sciences.

The effectiveness of the PROMEHS program-designed to enhance students' social and emotional learning (SEL)-has thus far been evaluated in preschool settings only through indirect measures. In contrast, this study assessed the effectiveness of the SEL component of the PROMEHS program by using direct measures with preschool children. Participants were 139 preschoolers (mean age: 4 years and 10 months; 63 girls, 48.6%) assigned to either a training group (N = 71), who engaged in PROMEHS activities, or a control group (N = 68), who continued with regular educational activities. All children were individually administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at the beginning of the study. In order to evaluate the PROMEHS effectiveness, the Test of Emotion Comprehension, and two false-belief tasks were administered both before and after the intervention phase. We analyzed the data using a general linear model statistical approach. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance, controlling for age and gender, was run. It revealed that children in the training group improved significantly more than their peers in the control group in emotion understanding, both globally and in the subcomponents related to the external and mental levels of emotion understanding. Additionally, we observed marginally greater gains in the training group children's theory of mind scores. We discuss the implications of these findings for implementing educational proposals that incorporate PROMEHS activities in preschool settings.

Background/Objectives. Social and Emotional Education (SEE) interventions during early childhood have shown considerable promise in enhancing children's emotion understanding, social competence, and behavioural adjustments. However, few studies have examined their long-term impact, especially across the preschool-to-primary school transition. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a manualized SEE program, Timmy's Trip to Planet Earth, in promoting emotional, behavioural, and social functioning over time. Methods. A quasi-experimental longitudinal design was adopted with pre-and post-test assessments conducted approximately 18 months apart. Participants were 89 typically developing children (aged 59-71 months), assigned to an experimental group (n = 45) or a waiting-list group (n = 44). The program combined teacher training, classroom-based lessons, home activities, and teachers' ongoing implementation support. The effectiveness of the program was measured via the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30). Results. Significant Time × Group interactions were observed for the TEC External and Mental components, indicating greater improvements in emotion recognition and mental state understanding in the intervention group. The SDQ revealed significant reductions in conduct problems and increased prosocial behaviours. In the SCBE-30, a significant interaction effect was found for social competence, with the intervention group showing greater improvement over time compared to the control group. Conclusions. The findings suggest that SEE programs can produce meaningful and lasting improvements in children's emotional and social skills across key educational transitions. Teacher training and family involvement likely played a critical role in supporting the program's sustained impact.

In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a validated programme in enhancing theory of mind, emotion understanding, and prosocial orientation, as well as language ability (receptive vocabulary). Participants were 61 preschoolers (mean age: 54.03 months) attending two nursery schools, who were randomly assigned to either a training or control group. During the intervention phase of the study, the training participants listened to stories and then engaged in conversational activities drawn from the PSULG Programme, involving a word launching technique
and language games. These procedures entail encouraging the use of
mentalistic terms – drawn from story texts – during conversations between children, facilitated by appropriately trained adults. In contrast, children in the control group participated in drawing activities or free play after listening to the same stories. Children in both groups completed a battery of tasks during the pretest and post-test phases of the research. Significant differences emerged between the two groups at post-test: trained participants significantly outperformed the control participants in language and global emotion understanding scores. Regarding theory of mind and prosocial orientation, we observed trends towards statistical significance. These results suggest that the PSULG Programme
can positively impact children’s social understanding in the preschool context.

Several international studies such as PISA and PILRS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), have stressed the importance of positive attitudes and behaviours as facilitators of individuals reading literacy during the school years and throughout their lives. Considering that there are not available instruments for assessing attitudes Towards Portuguese Language, it was proposed the development of the Attitudes towards Portuguese Language Questionnaire-ATPLQ (Questionário de Atitudes Face à Língua Portuguesa: QAFLP, Neto et al., 2011; Rebelo, 2012). The questionnaire has 22 Likert-type items, with four levels of response (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree), spread, through exploratory factor analysis (EFA), over three attitudinal dimensions: Behavioural, Affective, and Motivational.In this study we aimed to analyse the ATPLQ's latent structure with a pooled sample data of 1441 participants, applying similarity structure analysis (SSA) and confirmatory factor analysis of ordinal data (CFA). The SSA was carried out with Hudap in order to identify the structural properties of the questionnaire and to assess its adequacy in a Portuguese population. The CFA was carried out with LISREL in order to assure structural validity, i.e., accounting for factorial validity, but also for factors' convergent and discriminant validity, and composite reliability. These psychometric features allowed the comparison of both the EFA derived model and the SSA derived model. We justify the selection of the SSA's model, and we discuss the similarities between the results generated by SSA and LISREL procedures, highlighting their use in modeling constructs with ordinal indicators.

BACKGROUND-In the course of development, children show increased insight and understanding of emotions-both of their own emotions and those of others. However, little is known about the efficacy of training programs aimed at improving children's understanding of emotion. OBJECTIVES-To conduct an effect size analysis of trainings aimed at three aspects of emotion understanding: external aspects (i.e., the recognition of emotional expressions, understanding external causes of emotion, understanding the influence of reminders on present emotions); mental aspects (i.e., understanding desire-based emotions, understanding belief-based emotions, understanding hidden emotions); and reflective aspects (i.e., understanding the regulation of an emotion, understanding mixed emotions, understanding moral emotions). DATA SOURCES-A literature search was conducted using PubMed, PsycInfo, the Cochrane Library, and manual searches. REVIEW METHODS-The search identified 19 studies or experiments including a total of 749 children with an average age of 86 months (S.D.=30.71) from seven different countries. RESULTS-Emotion understanding training procedures are effective for improving external (Hedge's g = 0.62), mental (Hedge's g = 0.31), and reflective (Hedge's g = 0.64) aspects of emotion understanding. These effect sizes were robust and generally unrelated to the number and lengths of training sessions, length of the training period, year of publication, and sample type.

A duplex in MDS space is the simplest form of a circumplex and also the simplest form of a dimplex. It is discussed here, using an example from value research, that thinking about extensions of the duplex to more than just a 2x2 regionalization helps interpreting the given duplex properly and building theory that promises to be generalizable beyond the duplex. In particular, it is found that you cannot "simplify" a circumplex by reducing it to basic "dimensions". Both exploratory and confirmatory MDS, as well as factor analysis are used as statistical tools. constraints. Paper presented at the 13th biannual ISSWOV Conference.

Roazzi, A., Dias, M. B. B., Minervino, C. M., Roazzi, M. & Pons, F. (2009). Children´s comprehension of emotion: A cross-cultural investigation. In: D. Elizur & E. Yaniv. (Orgs.), Theory Construction and Multivariate Analysis: Applications of Facet Approach (pp. 83-102). Jerusalem: FTA. https://goo.gl/MmGzWm  DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2790.3600
Abstract: A sample of 396 children balanced for sex and type of school - 42,2% from a state school and 57,8%  from a private school; 44,2% males and 55,8 % females) aged from 4 to 12 years - were individually tested at the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to assess their understanding of nine aspects of emotions. An SSA of the ordination of the scores in the nine components was computed in order to analyze the interrelationship between these two brazilian groups with three other groups: british, italian, and quéchua. Several similarities were observed between brazilian children and the other 3 groups, notwithstanding the fact that state school children presented strong discrepancies in 4 of the nine components of the TEC when compared with the british group. This discrepancy of the state school group is clearly depicted in the SSA plot indicating similarities and differences of these groups with the other children’s groups.  Implications of these findings for better comprehending the performance of children from different culture and social background in the  TEC is discussed.