Author(s): Machado, Ana Paula de Oliveira Maló ; Veríssimo, Manuela ; Denham, Susanne
Date: 2012
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/2631
Origin: Repositório do ISPA - Instituto Universitário
Subject(s): Competências emocionais; Conhecimento das emoções; Desenvolvimento sócio-emocional
The main goal of the study was to test the Affect Knowledge Test (Denham, 1986) in a group of Portuguese preschool children. 160 children, ages between 3 and 5 years participated. The instrument includes four basic emotions related tasks and aims to assess: 1) children’s abilities to label emotions through emotional facial expressions, 2) to recognize emotional facial expressions through verbal labels, 3) to infer causes of emotions in emotion-eliciting typical situations; 3) to take others affective perspective in emotion-eliciting atypical situations. Confirmatory factorial analyses (CFA) were performed based on the theoretical factors defined by Denham (1986). Using the Unweighted Least Squares (ULS) method, data fit results were obtained through the multidimensional model structure, showing to be indicative of a good adjustment. Internal consistency values from the four dimensions were found reliable. Results suggest that the emotion knowledge development is mainly acquired during preschool years.
