Abstract

The study presents the criterion validity of the EMT (Izard et al., 2003), a measure to evaluate emotion knowledge in preschool. The criterion validity was examined in relation to children emotional regulation, their social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. The data were preliminarily analysed according to age and verbal ability. Participants were 120 children divided into three groups: 3, 4 and 5 years. As well as the EMT, the PPVT (Dunn & Dunn, 1997; Stella, Pizzoli & Tressoldi, 2000), the ERC (Molina et al., 2014; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) and the SCBE (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1995; Montirosso et al., 2007) were administered. Correlations and predictive analyses supported the criterion validity of the EMT. The results showed that emotion knowledge assessed by the EMT was positively associated with emotion regulation, social competence and general adjustment, and negatively with internalizing problems. As for the influence of age and verbal abilities, the results showed that the EMT scores tend to increase with age and are higher in children with higher levels of verbal ability.