Abstract

This study investigated the effects of an intervention on the emotional awareness of 4- to 6-year-olds enrolled in kindergarten classes. Sixteen children in one classroom formed an experimental group and fourteen children in a second classroom formed a control group.
Children in the experimental group engaged in a 5-week intervention, focusing on emotional awareness, specifically naming various emotions and their causes, suggesting solutions to problems evoking anger or sadness, and identifying mixed emotions. To support emotional awareness, children were engaged in drawing their own and others' emotions, discussing the causes of the emotions they had drawn, and proposing solutions to problems. In the final session, children participated in a group discussion of emotions evoked by art (museum paintings).
Pretest and posttest measures were children’s drawings and descriptions of (1) their own emotions, (2) a negative emotion expressed by a character in a photograph, and (3) mixed emotions of a character in a story. Children's drawings were scored for facial features associated with the emotion. Their descriptions were coded and scored for the identification of emotions and their causes, and when relevant, for resolution to problems. ANCOVAs on posttest scores (summed across tasks) did not show a significant group difference on drawing, but the experimental group scored higher than the control group on description at posttest. Qualitative analyses showed the causes of children’s happiness were often social and that children provided more elaborate causes from pretest to posttest. Children's contributions to discussions about museum paintings revealed that children talk about emotions (i.e., their own, in artwork) when observing realistic and abstract paintings.