Enhancing social cognition by training children in emotion understanding: a primary school study.
We investigated whether training school-age children in emotion understanding had a significant effect on their social cognition. Participants were 110 children (mean age=7 years 3 months) assigned to training and control conditions. Over a 2-month intervention program, after the reading of illustrated scenarios based on emotional scripts, the training group was engaged in conversations on emotion understanding, whereas the control group was simply asked to produce a drawing about the story. The training group outperformed the control group on emotion comprehension, theory of mind, and empathy, and the positive training outcomes for emotion understanding remained stable over 6 months. Implications of the findings are discussed.
['Ornaghi|Veronica|V|', 'Brockmeier|Jens|J|', 'Grazzani|Ilaria|I|']
D002648:Child D032882:Comprehension D004644:Emotions D004645:Empathy D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D012574:Schools D012919:Social Behavior D012938:Social Perception D013334:Students D056345:Theory of Mind
Social cognition Emotion understanding Primary school Conversation on emotions Theory of mind Empathy Intervention study