Examining Early Childhood Dimensions of Emotional Awareness Using a Novel Coloring Task

Abstract

Emotional awareness supports emotion regulation. Psychologists have children “color in feelings” to assess emotional awareness, yet whether this relates to emotion regulation is unknown. The present study used a novel coloring task examining behaviors related to coloring in and dictating emotions to assess children’s (N = 95) emotional awareness. Furthermore, it was tested whether performance on this task predicted emotion regulation. Children’s coloring behaviors indicating physiological emotional awareness predicted better emotion regulation. Results may inform the use of emotional awareness tasks in community and clinical settings. Findings also suggest that physiological emotional awareness may be a more salient clinical target in children.

Keywords:

• Early childhood
• emotional awareness
• emotion regulation

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Authors’ note

Findings were presented at the 31st Annual Association for Psychological Science Convention in Washington, DC.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data and materials can be made available if requested.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (K23 MH111708 PI: Grabell).