Abstract

In the present study the preliminary findings from the Italian validation of the Test of emotional lexicon (TLE) are presented. The TLE is aimed to evaluate 3 to 11 yrs. old children's comprehension of emotional lexicon, an important skill in the development of both theory of mind and emotional competence. Participants were 69 children distributed in three age groups equally distributed by gender: 22 preschoolers (mean age: 63 months; SD: 3.7), 22 7-year-old children (mean age: 92 months; SD: 2.9) and 25 9-year-old children (mean age: 111 months; SD: 4.2). The following instruments were administered: PPVT (Stella et al., 2000), TVM (Iannello & Antonietti, 2006), TEC (Albanese & Molina, 2008) and three false-belief tasks. Analyses showed high correlations between the TLE and the other measures, supporting the construct validity of the test and its utility in early evaluation of difficulties in emotional lexicon comprehension.