Avances en el estudio de la Inteligencia Emocional

Preliminary results of the Children’s Emotional Intelligence Assessment measure (CEIA)
that would influence emotional states (Rivers,
Brackett, Salovey, 2008). The MSCEIT-YV has
the advantage of individual and group administration
and the convenience to assess children in
larger numbers. However, the paper-and-pencil
format (even with computer versions) has limitations
in that instructions may be misunderstood,
subtle nuances of emotional abilities may not be
detected, and emotional states or extraneous factors
in the immediate moment of assessment cannot
be taken into account.
The Children’s Emotional Intelligent Assessment
(CEIA) measure was developed by Pellitteri
and Stern (2004) based on their experiences of social-emotional
learning programs in schools and to
address the need to assess EI abilities in young children.
The CEIA is an abilities measure that is based
on the Mayer & Salovey 1997 EI model. The format
is unique in that it is a structured individually
administered interview. The one-on-one administration
allows the interviewer to determine the children’s
understanding of tasks, clarify and elaborate
their responses, and monitor their moods and affective
reactions during responses.
The CEIA has three parts: (1) vocabulary, (2)
stories and (3) experiential. In part 1, the child’s
emotional vocabulary is assessed as a base line for
emotional knowledge. The child is required to verbally
list as many emotion words as possible and the
responses are rated for accuracy (i.e., whether it is
actually a word that expresses emotions) and for
what category of emotions it falls (i.e., happiness,
sadness, anger, fear, surprise, etc). Establishing a
base line of emotional vocabulary allows for the interpretation
of the subsequent emotion tasks that
could be impacted by limited knowledge of emotion
words.
Part 2, Stories involves structured questions in
response to four different situations where the main
characters are children. Respondents must identify
primary and secondary emotions, demonstrate knowledge
of emotional dynamics (i.e., how strong
would that emotion be? How long would it last?),
and indicate actions that would modify the emotional
intensity of the story characters. Part 2 aligns
with the perception, knowledge and regulation
components of the Mayer and Salovey EI model. It
primarily assess emotional abilities as they relate to
others since the children are describing emotional
processes of the characters in the stories.
In part 3, Experiential, the examiner induces
a mild emotional state in the children who then demonstrate
their capacities to identify emotional correlates
in themselves and regulate their current
mood. The first task is to imagine a particular scenario
that is designed to create a primary emotion
of disappointment. The child then describes the location
of the emotion (i.e. where do you feel it?), its
intensity, and likely duration and then describe strategies
that would alter the emotion. The format of
questions in part 3 are similar to part 2 but with the
addition of a self-focused perception of the actual
emotional state. This section of the CEIA is unique
in that the emotional state are being generated within
the respondent in an individual one-on-one assessment
rather than through written directions on
a paper-pencil or computer administered format. In
this way, the interviewer can gather more specific
and qualitative data about the child in this generated
emotional state. The second task in part 3 instructs
the child to create the feeling of “happiness”
and then describe how he or she created this. Similarly,
it assesses the perception of the emotional
state by asking where do you feel this? Like part 2,
the Experiential part three tasks align with the perception,
knowledge and regulation components of
the Mayer and Salovey model but with the addition
of the emotional facilitation component.
The test authors conducted a pilot study on
a sample of students in an urban school setting from
grades 4 through 8. To establish validity, measures
of emotional perception, self concept, teacher and
peer ratings were administered. The 360 format of
teacher and peer questionnaires determines the usefulness
of the CEIA in predicting EI in an academic
setting. This paper presents the preliminary results
of some of the basic analyses between the CEIA and
the validity measures.
Methods
Sample
The sample of the pilot study consisted of 18 students
in an urban school in grades 4 through 8. The
age range was 9 through 13. The majority of the
participants were in the 7 th and 8 th grade.
Measures
Children’s Emotional Intelligence Assessment (CEIA).
As described above, this measure was developed by
Pellitteri and Stern (2004) and consists of three
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