Preschool Children's Emotion Knowledge: Storybooks as a Learning Tool

Abstract

In the field of social and emotional learning, little empirical research has investigated storybooks as a tool for promoting emotion knowledge, or the ability to accurately recognize and label emotional cues in facial expressions, behaviors, and situations. This study utilized a randomized controlled, pre-post test design to explore the use of storybooks to promote emotion knowledge in thirty children attending Head Start. Twice a week for four weeks, the primary investigator or teacher read to the experimental classrooms a storybook about an emotion and engaged children in discussion. Children in the experimental condition, relative to an active control group that was read informational books, did not significantly improve in their understanding of emotions. These null findings are likely the result of reading to an entire classroom (as opposed to small groups of children). Subsequent limits in children'sattentiveness and story comprehension may have hindered the effectiveness of the intervention.