Emotional Competence (EQ) is a central key mediating factor with a considerable impact in all areas of a child's development. Despite its relevancy, there are currently only a few longitudinally oriented studies that focus on the development of emotional competencies, its conditions and changeability in childhood. First, few studies have shown that emotional competencies are related to a large extent with language skills. Thus, the question arose as to what extent the discussion of literary texts can promote emotional competencies. To date, there are no studies on this issue.

We hypothesize that reading and discussing children’s books with a high literary / aesthetic level increases emotional competencies in children. In addition, we are interested in the relationship between emotional competencies and language competencies. Based on these assumptions, which have not yet been empirically validated, we developed and implemented a reading program and tested it on 105 primary school children (second and third graders) during their attendance at after-school care centres. Children within the same care centre who did not participate in the reading program (N=105) formed the control group.

The evaluation study has a quasi-experimental pre-post design, and ran from March to July 2009. The aim of this study is the evaluation of this reading program based on a children's book selected for its affective content. We developed new evaluation instruments to measure emotional and language competencies in children before the implementation and evaluation of the reading program.

Publications

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R., Eid, M., Klann-Delius, G. (2012). Relationship between language competence and emotional competence in middle childhood. Emotion 12 (3). 503-514. doi:10.1037/a0026320

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R., Eid, M., Klann-Delius, G. (2012). An empirical look at the relation between language and emotional competence in child development. International Congress of Psychology 2012. Cape Town, South Africa.

Beck,L., Kumschick, I. R., Eid, M., Klann-Delius, G. (2012). About the nature of german children's emotion lexicon. Societas Linguistica Europaea 2012. Stockholm.

Beck, L. (2011). Einblicke in das Zusammenspiel sprachlicher und emotionaler Kompetenzen. Emotion und Sprache oder die “Emotive Wende”. Tagung der Schweizerischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Logopädie, Zürich.

Beck, L., Klann-Delius, G., Eid, M., Kumschick, I. R. (2011). Language competence and emotional competence are strongly related in middle childhood. 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language. Montreal. Poster IASCL Relation Language and Emotion (PDF).

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R. (2011). Die komplexe Interaktion sprachlicher und emotionaler Kompetenz in der kindlichen Entwicklung. Psycholinguistischer Zirkel. Zentrum für angewandte Sprachwissenschaften, Berlin.

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R., Eid, M., Klann-Delius, G. (2011). The relation between language and emotional competence: Is there a general ability factor linking them?. Berlin Brain Days. Berlin.

Kumschick, I. R., Beck, L. (2011). Does children's literature have the potential to increase emotional competence in children?. 4. Wissenschaftliche Tagung Autismus-Spektrum. Berlin.

Kumschick, I. R., Beck, L. (2011). Does Children's literature itself hold the potential to increase emotional competence in children?. 53. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen. Halle/Saale.

Beck, L. (2010). Die ganze Geschichte. Über Emotionen in kindlichen Narrationen. Narration und Emotion. Berlin.

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R. (2010). Zum Zusammenspiel sprachlicher und emotionaler Kompetenzen bei Schulkindern. 6. Interdisziplinäre Tagung über Sprachentwicklungsstörungen. Rostock.