Research has shown experimentally that if children are taught to use language to create distance (socially, physically, and temporarily) when they revisit a potentially traumatic experience they reduce the intensity of their emotions. Building on this, this study was carried out to explore whether children with better spatial skills are better at such downregulation because of their very aptitude in understanding the concept of distance. Using data from a general-population birth cohort in the UK, the study examined the bidirectional association between emotional dysregulation and spatial ability among children aged 5 and 7 years. The findings reveal a significant reciprocal relationship even after adjusting for family, contextual, and individual confounders including verbal ability: spatial skills at age 5 years were inversely related to emotional dysregulation at age 7 years, and conversely, greater emotional dysregulation at age 5 years was associated with poorer spatial ability at age 7 years. The two paths were equally strong and there was no evidence of differences between them on the basis of sex. Our results suggest that enhancing spatial abilities could be a potential avenue for supporting emotion regulation in middle childhood.

Impaired facial emotion recognition is a transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychiatric disorders. Childhood behavioral difficulties and parental emotional environment have been independently associated with impaired emotion recognition; however, no study has examined the contribution of these factors in conjunction. We measured recognition of negative (sad, fear, anger), neutral, and happy facial expressions in 135 children aged 5–7 years referred by their teachers for behavioral problems. Parental emotional environment was assessed for parental expressed emotion (EE) – characterized by negative comments, reduced positive comments, low warmth, and negativity towards their child – using the 5-minute speech sample. Child behavioral problems were measured using the teacher-informant Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Child behavioral problems and parental EE were independently associated with impaired recognition of negative facial expressions specifically. An interactive effect revealed that the combination of both factors was associated with the greatest risk for impaired recognition of negative faces, and in particular sad facial expressions. No relationships emerged for the identification of happy facial expressions. This study furthers our understanding of multidimensional processes associated with the development of facial emotion recognition and supports the importance of early interventions that target this domain.

Wings: Social and emotional wellbeing in the early years is a professional development programme designed to assist educators in early years services to improve outcomes for children. It uses a strengths-based approach and supports educators to understand the impact of their interactions with children and to use communication strategies, such as descriptive feedback, to develop children's capacities. These strategies are used to help children recognise their strengths and build their ability to self-regulate and manage their own social and emotional wellbeing. This paper reports on the outcomes of the Wings programme introduced into early childhood services in rural and remote south-west Queensland, Australia, through the Community Wellbeing Project run by the Pathways to Resilience Trust in partnership with Anglicare Southern Queensland. Preliminary findings indicate the Wings programme successfully enhanced the confidence and knowledge of early years educators engaged in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing.

This paper examines the benefits of regularly playing chess for the intellectual and social-emotional enrichment of a group of 170 schoolchildren from 6-16 years old. It is based on a quasi-experimental design, where the independent variable was the extracurricular activity of chess (n = 170) versus extracurricular activities of soccer or basketball (n = 60). The dependent variable was intellectual and socio-affective competence, which was measured by an IQ test (WISC-R), a self-report test (TAMAI) and a hetero-report questionnaire (teacher-tutor's criterion) applied at the beginning and the end of the academic year. In contrast to the comparison group, it was found that chess improves cognitive abilities, coping and problem-solving capacity, and even socioaffective development of children and adolescents who practice it. The results are modulated, particularly in the area socioaffective, by the personal profile of students who choose practice this activity.

The aim of the research described in this article was to build a protocol for describing students' development of emotional knowledge and understanding, and to tailor this to the requirements of assessing the progress of students with additional needs. The paper reports the establishment of such a developmental profile, using procedures for defining standards-referenced frameworks (Griffin, 2007) to create an observation questionnaire of students' emotional skills. This approach relies on the knowledge and collaboration of experienced teachers and researchers in the fields of special education and emotional development to establish an hypothesised framework of critical skills, observable behaviour statements, and developmental criteria that map qualitative transitions in student performance. The framework was subsequently validated against observation data gathered by teachers in 2007, from 77 Victorian government schools (21 mainstream, 56 special education) on 1597 students (3 to 18 years) with additional needs. Their responses were calibrated using partial credit item response modelling to empirically identify major transitions in students' emotional development and to establish the construct validity of the profile. In the area of students' emotional development, teachers have limited access to information that supports their assessment of progress and underpins decisions about setting goals for learning and appraising teaching strategies. The proposed article describes early stages of a research program that attempts to redress this situation by working with teachers to develop an appropriate and inclusive profile of emotional development for students with additional needs.