Preschoolers' prosocial behaviour: its relationship with linguistic, cognitive and emotional competences

This study is as part of a larger ongoing research aimed at investigating how prosocial behaviour is related to cognitive, linguistic and socioemotional abilities. Participants were 34 typically developing children (20 males), with a mean age of 52.97 months (SD=.10.51; range:34-70), attending to two kindergartnersin Milan, Italy. Children were administered the Peabody test, a False-belief understanding battery, and the Test of Emotion Comprehension. In addition, they were observed during free-play with peers, and their behaviours were codified on the basis of a list of prosocial actions.Preliminary analyses showed that age(r=.46;p<.01), language ability(r=.35;p<.05) and emotion comprehension (r=.45; p<.01) were positively correlated with prosocial behaviours. Partial correlations showed that emotion comprehension did not correlate with prosocial behaviourwhen controlling for age and language. These preliminaryfindings are in line withprevious outcomes highlighting the role of language ability inthe development of socio-emotional competence.