Associations Between Latino Kindergarteners’ Emotion Competence and their Language and Literacy Skills

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Introduction. Emotion competence is key to academic performance and developing emotional competence is particularly important for children from low-income households, as it serves as a protective factor in at-risk populations (Izard, 2001; Fine et al., 2003; Trentacosta & Izard, 2007). Furthermore, Latino children have stronger socioemotional and self-regulation skills at school entry compared to their counterparts from other ethnicities (Bustamante & Hindman, 2020; Murphey et al., 2014). This study examined concurrent relations between children’s emotional competence and academic skills in a sample of Latino kindergarteners from low-income households. We asked: 1) To what extent do Latino kindergarteners use emotion content and provide a coherent emotion narrative about negative and positive personal past events? 2) Are children’s emotion content and emotion narrative coherence related to their language and literacy skills?

Study population. Participants were 221 Latino kindergarten children (52% were girls; M age = 67.16 months) recruited from 13 schools serving high percentages of students from low-income households in one of the largest school districts in the U.S. (on average, 15 children per school).

Methods. Children’s emotion competence was assessed in the context of personal narratives, given the strong oral storytelling tradition in Latino communities (Luo et al., 2014). Children were asked to tell a story about a time they were happy (positive event) and a time they were unhappy (negative event). Narratives were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and coded for two aspects: a) emotion content: number of emotion states and behaviors, explanations, resolutions and cognition words (Fivush et al., 2003); and b) emotion narrative coherence: Likert scale from low (0) to high (3) in context, temporal and theme coherence (Reese et al., 2011). Children’s language and literacy skills were assessed using the Woodcock-Munoz Language Survey (WMLS-R; Woodcock & Munoz-Sandoval, 2005) and the expressive vocabulary items from IDELA (International Development and Early Learning Assessment; Save the Children, 2017). Assessments were conducted in the child’s preferred language at the beginning of the Kindergarten year.

Results and discussion. We conducted multilevel modeling analyses to account for clustering of children within schools. Table 1 shows the results of analyses testing for differences in emotion content and narrative coherence as a function of type of event. Overall, children provided more emotion content during the negative than the positive event, but their emotion narratives were similarly coherent across events. Table 2 shows the results analyses examining associations between children’s emotion content and emotion narrative coherence and their language and literacy outcomes. Emotion narrative coherence during the negative event related to children’s vocabulary and letter-word knowledge, and emotion narrative coherence during the positive event related to children’s vocabulary. No associations were found between emotion content and children’s language and literacy skills. Findings highlight the important role that emotion competence, particularly emotion narrative coherence, plays in Latino children’s language and literacy skills and the need to capitalize on Latino strengths to promote their academic development.

Authors

• Sophie Wolf, Davidson College
  Presenting Author

• Isabella Pilot, Davidson College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luis Cordero, Davidson College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jake Paz, Davidson College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diana Leyva, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author