The Adaptive Test of Emotion Knowledge for Children: Psychometric Results in Germany

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Children with an advanced knowledge of emotions are socially more competent, suffer less frequently from clinical-psychological disorders, and experience greater success at school, both socially and academically. The Adaptive Test of Emotion Knowledge (ATEM 3-9) captures seven components of emotion knowledge in a way that is fun for three- to nine-year-olds, namely by viewing a story of two children visiting a zoo. In the 35 items of the ATEM 3-9, children are asked to read emotions in faces, to recognize external and internal causes of emotions, and to distinguish between expressed and experienced emotions, and between adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. In addition to the basic emotions joy, sadness, fear and anger, ATEM 3-9 also includes children’s knowledge of the emotions surprise and disgust. It is adaptively designed by means of jump rules and termination rules within and between the components, which leads weaker children to work on fewer items. The two protagonists in the story can be either boys or girls. Names and drawings of the characters suggest a migration background for one of them. The ATEM 3-9 can be performed both in the paper version and as an electronic version with (either female or male) audio output on a tablet. So far, the ATEM 3-9 is available in German and English.
We present data of the German standardization study which includes N = 811 typically developing monolingual and multilingual children aged 3 – 9 and N = 47 children aged 6 – 9 that were undergoing child psychiatric treatment. The items of ATEM 3-9 were created and analyzed based on the Item-Response-Theory. A seven-dimensional model, corresponding to the seven components of the test, was superior to a one-dimensional model. The item parameters, i.e. the average difficulties (p = .18 – .83) and average selectivities (ri(t-i) = .39 - .65), were good and the reliabilities of the individual components were good to very good (EAP/ PV-reliability: .81 – .91). The older the children were the more correct answers they gave. However, no child achieved the highest score. Correlations with other measures of emotion knowledge (r = .42, p < .05), language skills (r = .44 – .60, p < .05), and executive functions (r = .24 – .33, p < .05) provided support for convergent validity. Differences in emotion knowledge between children that were undergoing child psychiatric treatment and a matched sample of typically developing children in some components underlined the differential validity of the ATEM 3-9.
Overall, the ATEM 3-9 meets the criteria of a valid, reliable, and objective test of emotion knowledge that it easy and fun for children. Noteworthy is the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the children's competencies regarding the seven components of emotional knowledge. Because the test showed no ceiling effects for older children, it is worth considering an upward extension of the originally planned range of age. For future research, a short form of the ATEM3-9 will be developed as an indicator of children’s general emotion knowledge to be used in larger scale tablet-based studies.

Authors

• Katharina Voltmer, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
  Presenting Author

• Maria von Salisch, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
  Non-Presenting Author