The effects of explanatory conversations on children's emotion understanding

Abstract

Ninety‐three children ranging in age from 5 to 8 years ( M = 82.46 months, SD = 13.20) participated in a training study designed to improve their emotion understanding. Children either explained (self‐explanation condition) or listened to an experimenter who explained (experimenter‐explanation condition) the causes of protagonists' hidden and ambivalent emotional reactions in nine different vignettes. Compared to a control group who listened to the vignettes and answered questions unrelated to emotions, children assigned to the self‐explanation and experimenter‐explanation conditions increased from pre‐ to post‐test in their emotion understanding. The educational implications of explanatory conversations in facilitating children's emotion understanding and general learning are discussed.