Toddlers’ emotion socialization at nursery school: A conversational intervention using psychological language

Introduction. Children’s emotion socialization (ES) concerns with expression, comprehension, regulation and experience of emotion (Thompson, 2008; Denham, 2009). On this conceptual background, we carried out a training study in the context of nursery school, with the active participation of trained teachers. The effect of an intervention based on the conversational use (Siegal, 1999) of psychological language was tested. Method. Fifty toddlers (24 to 36 months) took part in the study. Two homogeneous groups (training vs control) were created on the basis of gender, age and results from pre-test. Children were pre- and post-tested with measures evaluating language, emotion comprehension, ToM and pro-social behavior. Trained children were engaged, in small groups, in a 2-month intervention program consisted of daily sessions lasting around fifteen minutes. They were read brief illustrated stories enriched with psychological lexicon, and involved in conversations about the nature, expression and causes of emotion. The control group listened to the same stories and played freely. Results. Analyses revealed a significant effect of Time ( p < .001), and a significant Time × Group interaction (p = .01), as at the post-test the training group significantly outperformed the control group. The findings suggest the utility of the conversational procedure, based on the use of inner-state language and carried out by expert teachers, in enhancing ES at nursery school