Nouvelles normalités Nouvelles pathologies Nouvelles ... - Psynem

6° 6éme Congresso Congrès Européen Europeo de di Psicopatologia Psychopathologie dell’Infanzia de l’Enfance e et dell’Adolescenza
de l’Adolescence
Nuove Nouvelles normalità normalités Nuove Nouvelles patologie pathologies Nuove pratiche Nouvelles pratiques
FRIDAY, May 6 POSTER SESSIONS
Poster session 8 Taking care and follow up in cases of severe sickness
and mouring - severe disabilities
5 - EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN CHILDHOOD. THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE AND EMOTIONAL
ABILITIES IN ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Giacomo Mancini (1) , Paola Surcinelli (1) , Sergio Agnoli (2) , Bruno Baldaro (1 (1) (
), Elena Trombini
1) (2) Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, (Bologna - IT); Department of Developmental and Social Psychology,
University of Padova, (Padova - IT)
Emotional Intelligence includes the competency
in identifying emotions, recognising the meaning
of facial expressions and perceive emotional
messages. Disorders of emotional perception
cause significant difficulties, as they produce or
are linked with a lack of understanding of the social
environment and thus a poor adaptation to it.
The present work examines the role of emotional
abilities and cognitive non verbal abilities
in academic performance, on a large sample
of 490 school-aged children (249 females, age
range 8-11). In particular children’s cognitive
ability was assessed by Raven’s Coloured Progressive
Matrices (CPM) and the emotion recognition
ability by a facial expression recognition
task. The results showed that the Raven’s CPM
scores were a good predictor of academic performance
during primary school (p < .001). Raven’s
CPM scores were positively related with
both Italian and Mathematic marks. On the contrary,
the emotion recognition ability was not related
to academic performance and to Raven’s
Matrices scores.
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The results of the present study showed that
the general non-verbal cognitive ability assessed
by Raven’s Progressive Matrices is an important
predictor of success in scholastic performance,
that plays an important role in impacting students’
future opportunities. In contrast, the ability
to recognize emotion from facial expressions
was in the present study not related to academic
performance and to the general non-verbal ability,
although it is considered a main component
of the non-verbal communication system and a
crucial social ability.
The present findings seem to evidence a different
influence exerted by cognitive and emotional
abilities on children development and the
need for future studies investigating the impact
of these different abilities on other outcomes.
For example are required examining the relationship
between the development of emotion expression
recognition and children’ social functioning
(social network analysis). Further studies
could enhance our understanding, assessment
and prevention of such emotional disorders.