The association between social and emotional competences in toddlers and preschoolers

The acquisition of social and emotional competences in early childhood benefits children at multiple levels, such as for social adjustment, psychological and social wellbeing, and school achievement (Denham et al., 2016). Prosocial behaviors, emotion knowledge, and theory of mind are foundational skills of social and emotional competences (Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009). A body of research has suggested that prosocial behaviors are associated to both emotion knowledge and theory of mind (Ensor & Hughes, 2005; Imuta et al., 2016), but it is unclear what is the specific pattern of associations between distinct types of prosocial behaviors and social cognition skills, even controlling for language, age, and gender. Participants were 140 children aged 2- and 3-year-old (M = 35.6 months; SD = 6.77), who were administered direct measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. Furthermore, they were observed during free play with peers to detect prosocial behaviors. Results of ordinal logistic regression analyses showed that helping behaviors were especially accounted for by emotion knowledge and gender in favor of girls while sharing behaviors were mostly accounted for by theory of mind understanding and language abilities. These findings both contribute to the current literature and may help early childhood practitioners design and implement preventive intervention programs aimed at enhancing prosocial behaviors.