Emotion Understanding Key to Singaporean Kids' Social and Academic Success
OER 09/19 YY - Singaporean children’s emotion understanding and its relations to anxiety and academic achievement
Project Team
Co-PI: Dr Yue Yu, CRCD, NIE
Co-PI: Associate Professor Stella Tsotsi, Oslo Metropolitan University
Co-PI: Dr Corina Möller, Saarland University
Project Description
The research team developed a set of in-person tasks to examine children’s emotion understanding, collaborating with preschools and primary schools from 2019 to 2020 for initial piloting. Using this set of tasks along with other measures, the research team gathered data on children’s emotion understanding, social skills, anxiety level, and academic achievement between 2020 to 2022. In addition to the in-person tasks, two sets of online tasks have been developed to accommodate data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings revealed that all three sets of tasks worked well for Singaporean children aged 4 to 10. Compared to their international peers, Singaporean children outperformed German children on facial emotion recognition, and judged emotional tones more accurately than American children. Furthermore, the study found that Singaporean children's emotion understanding positively correlated with social skills, particularly engagement in boys. For girls and younger children (ages 4-7), there was a significant association between emotion understanding and enhanced academic performance, especially in reading and writing skills.
Other than the reports and publications, three sets of tasks were developed for use by researchers and practitioners to examine children’s emotion understanding.
Project Implications
Findings from the study highlighted the critical role of emotion understanding on children’s social emotional development and academic achievement. This informs early intervention programs and school curriculum or activities that are targeted at improving children’s social emotional skills as well as reading and writing skills.
Resources
NIE Research Brief Series
- Yang, Y., & Adelia, K. (2024). Importance of Emotion Understanding on Academic Outcomes (NIE Research Brief Series No. 24-010). Singapore: National Institute of Education.
Media Interviews/Coverages
- April 2022, Today Online, Parents should take care in how they handle their children's emotions. (Commentary)
- February 2021, capital 958, Radio interview on factors affecting children’s mental health. (Interview)
- January 2021, Lian he Zao Bao(联合早报), “How does COVID-19 influence children’s mental health? (冠病疫情如何影响孩子心理健康?)”
- Understanding Your Kid Newsletter | Vol 5 | Aug 2024
- Understanding Your Kid Newsletter | Vol 5 | Aug 2023
- Understanding Your Kid Newsletter | Vol 5 | Aug 2022
- Understanding Your Kid Newsletter | Vol 5 | Aug 2021
- Understanding Your Kid Newsletter | Vol 5 | Aug 2020
Selected Articles
- Yang, Y., Möller, C., Lim, S., Adelia, K., & Wang, Q. (2023). Recognizing Emotional Cues in Word Content versus Facial Expression: A Cross-cultural Comparison. In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 45).
- Yang, Y., Tsotsi, S., Adelia, K., Möller, C., & Yu, Y. (in revision). Emotion recognition and academic achievement among Singaporean children.
- Möller, C., Zeimer, Z., Aschersleben, A., & Yang, Y. (in revision). Cultural influences on facial emotion recognition: A comparative study of children aged 4 to 9 years in Germany and Singapore.
Selected Talks
- Yang, Y., Adelia, K., & Wang, Q. (2024, August). Children’s understanding of emotion cues from auditory stimuli: comparison among three cultural groups. Paper presented in the XXVII International Congress of International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), Indonesia.
- Yang, Y., Möller, C., Lim, S.W.Y., Adelia, K., & Wang, Q. (2023, July). Recognizing emotional cues in word content versus facial expression: A cross-cultural comparison. Poster presented in 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci), Sydney, Australia.
- Yang Y. (2023, May). Children’s emotion understanding in different cultural context. Invited talk presented in talk series Language and Emotion organized by National Library Board, Singapore.
- Yang Y., Adelia, K., Möller, C., & Tsotsi, S. (2023, March). Singaporean children’s emotion understanding, social skills, and academic achievement. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
- Yang, Y. & Adelia, K (2022, March). Singaporean children’s emotion understanding and academic achievement. Paper presented at the 9th Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference (RPIC), Singapore.
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