The relationship between emotion understanding and social skills in preschoolers: The mediating role of verbal ability and the moderating role of working memory

ABSTRACT

A considerable body of research has shown that preschoolers who have a better understanding of emotions also have better social competence. In the present study, we focused on the potential roles that verbal ability and working memory may play in the relationship. A total of 187 4- to 6-year-old preschoolers completed: (i) the Test of Emotion Comprehension for emotion understanding; (ii) the Counting and Labelling test for working memory; and (iii) the Core Vocabulary scales of the WPPSI for verbal ability. Two teachers assessed each participant’s social competence. The results showed that preschoolers’ emotional understanding is a predictor of their social competence but verbal ability fully mediated the relationship. Furthermore, verbal ability positively predicted children’s social abilities only when they also had superior working memory. These findings help us to understand how verbal ability and working memory affect the relationship between emotion understanding and social competence in preschoolers.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion understanding
• verbal ability
• working memory
• social competence
• preschoolers

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ayse Payir for the helpful comments to the manuscript. We also thank Qunxia Xu and Lijuan Tang for their contributions to data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Project for Science Foundation of Zhejiang (Grant NO. LQ20C090011), Philosophy and Social Science Project of Hangzhou (Grant No. Z19JC064). General research project of Zhejiang Educational Department (Grant No. Y201839785) and Pre-research Project of Zhejiang University of Technology to the first author.