Social and emotional competence in early years education: the impact of intervention programs in young children's development

Past research on early childhood has underscored the impact of the first years of children’s life on their social cognition and their socio-emotional competence. In this conference, I review recent research regarding interventions aimed at enhancing social cognition and socio-emotional competence in early years education. In relation to the work of my research group, I will focus on two intervention studies. In the first study, preschool children were read stories enriched with mental state language. After listening to a story, the intervention group took part in language games and conversations aimed at stimulating children’s use of mental terms. We found significant effects on children’s theory of mind and emotion understanding. In the second study, we adopted observational and experimental paradigms to examine the efficacy of an intervention carried out by trained teachers and based on conversing about emotions with small groups of toddlers. The training group significantly outperformed the control group not only in their social cognition but also in their prosocial behavior towards peers. Educational implications of these findings will be discussed, underlining the role of validated programs to promote children’s development.