Associations Between Preschoolers' Social-Emotional Competence and Preliteracy Skills

Infant and Child DevelopmentInf. Child. Dev. (2015)Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/icd.1899

Associations Between Preschoolers’Social–Emotional Competence andPreliteracy Skills

*CorrespondenE-mail: tcurb

Copyright © 201

Timothy W. Curbya,*, Chavaughn A. Brownb,Hideko Hamada Bassetta and Susanne A. Denhama

aGeorge Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USAbAppleTree Institute for Education Innovation, Washington, DC, USA

Identifying and understanding the predictors of preliteracy skillscan set the stage for success in a child’s academic career. Recent lit-erature has implicated social–emotional competence as a potentialcomponent in helping children learn preliteracy skills. To furtherunderstand the role of social–emotional competence in preliteracy,the associations between various social–emotional competenciesand preliteracy skills in 91 preschool children attending sevenHead Start classrooms were examined. Results of structuralequation modelling indicated that preschoolers’ expressiveness/regulation (angry/aggressive, cooperative/sensitive or anxious/withdrawn) and emotion knowledge predicted preliteracy perfor-mance (alphabet knowledge and print and phonological aware-ness), above and beyond gender, age, maternal education,attentional abilities and classroom emotional support. These find-ings serve to broaden the research surrounding social–emotionalcompetence and highlight its association with academic readiness.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: preschool; social–emotional competence; preliteracy skills;Head Start; structural equation modelling

Preschool is a time when children gain many pre-academic skills such as learningletters, numbers and rhyming. In addition, preschoolers are also in the process ofbecoming socially and emotionally competent. Facets of social–emotional compe-tence include expressing and regulating emotions, having knowledge of emotionsand solving social problems. These skills may be instrumental in children’s learn-ing because they allow children to operate in the classroom social environment.Because a large focus of instruction in preschool is on preliteracy skills, we expectthat social–emotional skills may lay the groundwork for learning preliteracy skills.

ce to: Timothy W. Curby, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, [email protected]

5 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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However, little is known about which facets of social–emotional competencemay be most important in promoting preliteracy skills, and whether differentfacets of social–emotional competence may be differentially related to facets ofpreliteracy skills. The purpose of the present study is to examine the combinedroles of various social–emotional skills in predicting domains of preliteracy skillin preschoolers.

Preliteracy Skills

Academic readiness refers to a set of skills that predict positive academic outcomesonce children enter formal schooling (Bierman, Torres, Domitrovich, Welsh & Gest,2009; Konold & Pianta, 2005). One of the most important set of academic readinessskills for preschoolers to develop is preliteracy skills, a common focus of preschoolactivities. Preliteracy skills are constituted by a whole suite of subskills that in-clude aspects of alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness and print aware-ness (Justice, Invernizzi, Geller, Sullivan & Welsch, 2012). These preliteracy skillsform the bedrock on which language and literacy skills are built in kindergartenand beyond. The present study uses two empirically validated domains ofpreliteracy skills: alphabet knowledge and print and phonological awareness(Townsend & Konold, 2010).

Alphabet knowledgePreliteracy skills begin with the recognition of upper-case and lower-case letters

and being able to name them (e.g. alphabet recognition). Often, in conjunctionwith learning letter names, children understand the correspondence betweenletters and sounds. For example, children learn that both ‘T’ and ‘t’ are called ‘t’and makes a \t\ sound.

Print and phonological awarenessA related set of skills emerge during the preschool years that link letters and

sounds into complete words, resulting in an understanding of words as functionalelements of language (Justice & Ezell, 2001). Word and print awareness have beenidentified as core components of learning to read (Stuart, 1995). For example, chil-dren who know the names of letters ultimately will have an advantage whenlearning to spell words. Another task is to relate sounds to one another such asin rhyming tasks. Phonological awareness is important in learning new wordsand reading because it provides children with the tools for word decoding (Pullen& Justice, 2003). Phonological awareness is one of the best predictors of laterreading achievement (Blachman, 2000).

Social–Emotional Competence

Social–emotional competence includes the appropriate expression and regulationof emotions, along with the knowledge of different emotions, combined with be-ing able to solve problems that come about in social situations. The developmentof social–emotional competence is considered to be a transactional process inwhich children’s skills and abilities interact with environments and result in effec-tive social interactions (Denham, 2006a; Halberstadt, Denham & Dunsmore, 2001;Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009). For example, a child may realize that asking toplay with another child, instead of trying to take a toy, leads to being able to play

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2015)DOI: 10.1002/icd

Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy

with the toy. As the child’s competencies grow, the child is provided with a bank ofsocial–emotional skills fromwhich to choose when faced with interactions varyingin complexity and potential difficulty.

Referring to social–emotional competence indicates that social competence andemotional competence work together to form competent behaviour. Each of thesecompetencies themselves is composed of a constellation of behaviours and skills,but for the purposes of this study, we are focusing on emotional expressiveness,emotion regulation, social problem solving and emotion knowledge (Denham,2006a, 2006b). All elements of emotional competence are uniquely intertwined asparts of a whole and, with relational and prosocial skills, form the foundation ofthe overarching social–emotional competence concept that we expect to be relatedto school readiness (Denham et al., 2012).

Emotional expressivenessEmotional expressiveness can occur in many forms, positive and negative, dur-

ing a preschool day. Sharing positive emotional expressions (such as smiles) withone’s peers has been found to initiate social exchanges and, consequently, assist inthe formation of friendships and peer likeability (Denham, 2006a, 2006b; Denham,McKinley, Couchoud & Holt, 1990). Thus, the repertoire of emotions that childrencan express in the preschool environment has the power to either draw friendscloser or, in the case of frequent negative expressions, push people away (Denham,2006a, 2006b; Denham et al., 1990). For example, a child who expresses a lot ofanger may, over the course of the year, wind up isolated from other children.Moreover, preschoolers’ ability to emotionally express themselves enablesnonverbal communication with other children and adults in their environment(Denham, 2006b). A child’s ability to accurately express emotions enables him orher to pursue goal-oriented behaviour – including being sensitive to others’ emo-tions and cooperating with others. For most preschoolers, the key developmentaltask is navigating their new social environment (Denham, 2006a, 2006b).

Emotion regulationPreschoolers’ regulation abilities are of great interest not only to developmental

psychologists but to parents and teachers as well. Emotion regulation allows chil-dren to react in ways that are not simply a product of feelings, but their cognitionsas well. For example, a child who has a toy taken away may feel angry but be ableto downregulate that emotional response and choose to respond in a nonaggres-sive way. The internal (e.g. biological reactions, cognitive construals and subjectivefeelings), external (e.g. control of facial expressions and behavioural strategies) andsocial (e.g. cultural and social significance and the reactions of others) work to-gether to define the child’s response (Zeman, Cassano, Perry-Parrish & Stegall,2006). Emotion regulation has been considered one of the most important elementsof emotional competence because of the construct’s deeply entwined interactionwith other developmental tasks during the preschool years, such as beginningpeer relationships and attaining cognitive milestones (Blair, Denham, Kochanoff& Whipple, 2004).

Notably, children’s social relationships are impacted by their abilities to expressand regulate emotions appropriately (Blair et al., 2004; Denham, Blair, Schmidt &DeMulder, 2002). Children who express anger may be more prone to aggress,disrupting their relationships with peers. Children who modulate their emotionsmay be better able to cooperate with other children on classroom tasks. Childrenwho are fearful and anxious are more likely to withdraw from the social aspects

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of their classroom environment. Thus, emotional expression and regulation arefoundational for relational skills that children use in the classroom.

Social problem solvingSocial problem solving has consistently been listed as a key component of a

child’s social–emotional development (Denham & Brown, 2010). Many problemsthat occur in a preschooler’s day are social in nature. Children are constantlyconfronted by others doing things that they do not like. Their emotions and re-sponses to these challenging situations can reveal the degree to which they areusing social problem-solving skills (Denham, Way, Kalb, Warren-Khot & Bassett,2012). For example, a competent child will likely feel sad if another child knocksdown a block tower or takes a ball. For these competent children, this sad emotionis often followed by a socially competent response, such as telling the other child itwas not nice to knock down the tower or asking if s/he wants to play with the balltogether. Thus, the ability to cooperate, take turns, seek help when necessary andlisten to other children and adults is critical to children’s well-being in theclassroom (Denham, 2006a; Payton et al., 2000; Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009).Further, social difficulties may serve as barriers, preventing the preschooler fromlearning the academic skills presented in the classroom. For example, if a childhas poor relationships and is excluded by peers from a letter–object learning areaduring centre time, the child is not only missing out on social interactions withpeers but is also not able to glean the preliteracy skills from participating in thecentre. Collaboration on pre-academic tasks also is much more difficult for a childlacking in prosocial skills. A preschooler who is able to navigate this process bysuccessfully evaluating a problematic scenario, weighing the outcomes of possiblereactions and choosing to respond in a socially competent manner is more likely tobe evaluated positively by his or her teachers and peers (Denham, 2006a, 2006b;Denham & Brown, 2010).

Emotion knowledgeAt its core, emotion knowledge refers to the ability of a child to identify an emo-

tional signal (Halberstadt et al., 2001). Children develop an understanding of facialexpressions and the causes of the happy, sad and angry emotions prior to theirunderstanding of more complex emotions such as fear or surprise (Denham &Couchoud, 1990a, 1990b). Emotion knowledge assists in the development ofadaptive social and academic behaviours (Denham & Grout, 1993; Izard, Stark,Trentacosta & Schultz, 2008; Trentacosta & Izard, 2007). For example, emotionknowledge may allow children to better engage in a shared book-reading task –a common method to teach preliteracy skills – by providing children better insightinto characters and their feelings.

In some cases, researchers divide emotion knowledge into two categories:knowledge of emotional expressions and situational emotion knowledge. Forexample, a child’s ability to verbally label facially expressed emotions (such as ahappy or afraid face) constitutes knowledge of emotional expressions, whereas achild’s ability to interpret more subtle and sometimes implied emotional cues isconsidered situational emotion knowledge (Raver, Garner & Smith-Donald,2007). Situational emotion knowledge is considered to be a more advanced skill,because it requires the perception and interpretation of less obvious displays ofemotion (Raver et al., 2007). Both forms of emotion knowledge enable the childto work towards developmentally appropriate goals, such as successful peerinteraction and appropriate expression of emotion.

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Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy Skills

Social–emotional factors have been increasingly linked to academic success(Denham & Brown, 2010). For instance, children with strong social–emotional com-petence skills have also been observed to experience more positive attitudes aboutthe school environment (Birch & Ladd, 1997); conversely, children who enter schoolwith deficits in social–emotional skills have been identified as enjoying school lessand, in turn, learning less than their socially competent peers (Denham, 2006a,2006b). Also, prosocial behaviour has been shown to help cultivate new friendshipsand relationships with teachers (Denham, 2006a, 2006b; Raver et al., 2007). Addition-ally, children who have positive relationships with peers or teachers may also bemore willing to explore the classroom, furthering their learning experiences(Coolahan, Fantuzzo,Mendez&McDermott, 2000). Others have found that prosocialbehaviours such as sharing, helping and cooperating with one’s peers are directlyassociated with concurrent and later academic achievement (Bierman et al., 2009;Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura & Zimbardo, 2000; Ladd, 1990).

There is reason to believe that social–emotional skills may be related toacademic skills generally, and preliteracy skills in particular – the single biggestacademic content area spent time on in preschool (La Paro et al., 2009). Forexample, Bierman et al. (2008) found that preschoolers who received additionalsocial–emotional training outperformed the control group in vocabulary, emergingliteracy and learning engagement. Furthermore, preliteracy skills may be differen-tially associated with different domains of social–emotional competence. Forexample, emotion knowledge may allow children to better engage in a sharedbook-reading task – a common method to teach preliteracy skills. Alternatively,social problem solving may allow children to better engage in centres that focuson preliteracy skills because peer relationships are prevalent in centre time. Further-more, some domains of preliteracy skills are going to bemore or less sensitive to theschooling. For example, many children are already knowledgeable about thealphabet by the time they are in preschool, making those skills less sensitive tothe classroom environment. The present study identifies domains of preschoolpreliteracy skills and looks for associations with different types of social–emotionaldomains. In addition, most research that has examined relations between academicand social–emotional skills has not used a whole constellation of social–emotionalskills (with a notable exception being Denham, Bassett, Zinsser, & Wyatt, 2014).Thus, the present study will be able to speak to not just whether there are associa-tions between academic (preliteracy) and social–emotional skills but also whichsocial–emotional skills may be particularly salient.

Other Factors Related to Preliteracy Skills

GenderSmall but significant gender differences are commonly found on preliteracy

measures (Below, Skinner, Fearrington & Sorrell, 2010). However, using thepreliteracy measure used in this study, the Phonological Awareness LiteracyScreening (Invernizzi, Sullivan & Meier, 2001), Townsend and Konold (2010) onlyfound small differences in nursery rhyme awareness. Thus, although we did notexpect large associations with gender, if any, we included gender as a covariate.

AgeOlder children tend to score higher on measures of academic achievement

(Farkas & Beron, 2004). Not only have they had more time to be exposed to

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academic content, but they have also had more exposure to social situations thatpromote learning. Furthermore, normal developmental processes allow for moreskill growth, both academic and social. Thus, to make sure that we are isolatingthe association between social–emotional skills and preliteracy skills, we willcontrol for age in the analyses.

Maternal educationAcademic outcomes, including preliteracy skills, are often sensitive to maternal

education. Not only is maternal education an indicator of the amount of materialresources available in a family (i.e. socio-economic status) (e.g. Farkas & Beron,2004), but also, in the case of preliteracy skills, maternal education may delimitmothers’ own ability to directly stimulate language growth. For example, thereare very large differences evident in the vocabulary knowledge of children ofprofessional parents versus children in families on welfare (Hart & Risely, 1995).Although our sample consists entirely of poor children, we expect children withmothers with more education to have more preliteracy skills, and thus, we includematernal education as a covariate.

Attentional abilitiesChildren’s ability to learn is constrained by the degree to which they can direct

and maintain attention on a learning task. Research has shown that children’sattentional abilities are related to preliteracy skills such as phonological skillsand print knowledge (Lonigan et al., 1999). Thus, the present study will controlfor attentional abilities in the analyses.

Classroom emotional supportIn addition to child-level social–emotional skills, high-quality teacher–child in-

teractions have been found to promote academic readiness and social–emotionalcompetence (Ahn, 2005; Ahn & Stifter, 2006; Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Pianta& Howes, 2002; Mashburn et al., 2008; Palermo, Hanish, Martin, Fabes & Reiser,2007). Additionally, preschool teachers who demonstrated higher levels of emo-tional support dimensions had children who were rated higher in social–emotionalcompetence the following year (Curby et al., 2009). The emotional closenessbetween a child and his or her teacher has also been linked to positive outcomesin young children’s reading ability (Burchinal et al., 2002). Others have also foundthat teacher–child closeness allows children to reach their academic potential andpromotes social–emotional competence (Palermo et al., 2007). Also, positiveteacher–child relationships have been linked to academic and social–emotionalgains for children living in poverty (Raver et al., 2007). Thus, the present studycontrols for classroom emotional support in the analyses.

Current Study

The overarching goal of the current study is to examine the associations betweenaspects of social–emotional competence and preliteracy skills for children enrolledin Head Start, a US federal preschool programme for children in poverty. Gener-ally, we hypothesize that higher levels of social–emotional competence – includingthe components of emotional expressiveness/regulation, social problem solv-ing and emotion knowledge – will predict higher levels of preliteracy skillsamong preschoolers. More specifically, we expect cooperative/sensitive aspects

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of emotional expressiveness/regulation, sad/socially competent aspects of socialproblem solving and higher emotion knowledge to be positively related topreliteracy (Denham et al., 2012). Furthermore, we expect that these relationsmay vary by the specific preliteracy outcome (alphabet knowledge or print andphonological awareness), but we do not hypothesize about which social–emotionalcomponent will be related to which outcome.

METHOD

Participants

Data for the current study were part of a larger study, which sought to develop anassessment battery to measure social and emotional aspects of early school adjust-ment. For the current study, data were collected on 91 children in seven differentHead Start classrooms in the suburbs of the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.In order to be eligible for Head Start services, children had to be from families thatwere poor by federal standards. Children ranged in age from 42 to 64months old,with a mean age of 58.7months. Of the participants, 49.5% were male. Additionaldemographic data were provided by 96% of the sample. Of these, approximately49.4% were African American, 23% were identified as Caucasian and 27.6% wasclassified as other. Over half of the sample was non-Hispanic/Latino (75.5%). Ofthe data provided, 22% of mothers did not graduate high school, 60% obtained ahigh school diploma or General Educational Development, 13% possessed anassociate degree, 1% reported having an undergraduate degree and 4% reportedhaving a graduate degree.

Demographic data were also obtained for the teachers included in the study(n=7). All teachers included in the study were female. Other demographic datawere missing from one teacher. Of the data available, 50% of the teachers identifiedthemselves as African American, and 50% identified as Caucasian. Teachersranged in age from 18 to 44years old, with a plurality of teachers within the35–44 age range. The majority of teachers reported earning a bachelor’s degree(67%); however, one teacher reported earning a master’s degree, and oneteacher reported obtaining an associate’s degree.

Procedure

Data for the current study were collected between February and May of 2009.Parents received written consent letters via a research information packet senthome by children’s teachers. After consent and demographic/questionnaire formswere collected for each child, data collection at the child level commenced. Themeasures included in the present study consisted of two direct assessment mea-sures examining preschoolers’ emotion knowledge and social problem-solvingskills. Assessments were completed over three visits (February through April),with each session not exceeding a 20-min time frame. Teacher report of children’semotional expressiveness/regulation was also obtained at the end of datacollection (May 2009).

Additionally, teachers were asked to sign a consent form indicating their will-ingness to participate in both teacher questionnaires and classroom observations.Classroom observations, which examined the quality of teacher–child interactions,were conducted on one day throughout the data collection period from Februaryto May. A description of the observation system is available in the measures

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section. To obtain data in a variety of modalities, at the end of data collection,teachers were also asked to complete questionnaires, which measured constructssimilar to the observations. All of the teacher questionnaires were completed atthe end of data collection (May 2009).

Also, in May of 2009, the Education Specialist at Head Start completed thePhonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschool (PALS-PreK) for everychild 3years old or older. These data were provided by Head Start for everystudent in the study.

Measures

Demographic information: gender, age and maternal educationUpon study entry, parents of children completed a questionnaire. The question-

naire included questions about the child’s gender and birthday and the mother’seducational attainment. The birthday was converted to the child’s age in monthsat the start of the study. Mother’s education was dichotomized into high schooleducation or less and some college or more.

Attentional skills: assessor reportThe Assessor Report was designed to capture a global picture of children’s emo-

tions, attention and behaviour throughout the assessor–child interaction during adirect assessment of self-regulation (Preschool Self-regulation Assessment: PSRA;Smith-Donald, Raver, Hayes & Richardson, 2007). It was created by adapting theLeiter-R social–emotional rating scale (Roid & Miller, 1997) and the DisruptiveBehaviour Diagnostic Observation Schedule (DB-DOS) coding system (Wakschlaget al., 2005) and consists of 28 items. Following the completion of all PSRA tasks bythe child, the assessor rated the child on regulation-related behaviours using a 0- to3-point scale. Those behaviours were as follows: (1) attention (e.g. pays attentionduring instructions and demonstrations); (2) impulse control (e.g. refrains fromindiscriminately touching test materials); (3) sociability (actively attempts toengage interviewer); (4) energy and feelings (e.g. shows pleasure in accomplish-ment); and (4) emotion regulation (e.g. modulates and regulates arousal level inself). The assessor report was found to be related to the teacher report of socialcompetence, externalizing and internalizing behaviour problems, early math andverbal skills (Smith-Donald et al., 2007).

In the present study, only the attention scale was included. The internal consis-tency of the attention scale was a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.86 (five items). Inter-raterreliability was calculated between the assessor and a reliability coder. For theattention scale, inter-rater reliability, as measured by an intraclass correlation,equaled 0.61.

Classroom emotional supportThe Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro & Hamre,

2008) captures the quality of classroom interactions between teachers andstudents. The CLASS includes 10 measured dimensions that are subsequentlyaggregated into three domains (Hamre & Pianta, 2007): emotional support,classroom organization and instructional support. For the purposes of the currentstudy, only the emotional support domain was included in the analysis.

The emotional support domain includes the four measured dimensions (α=0.91):positive climate, negative climate (reversed), teacher sensitivity and regard for

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student perspectives. Positive climate captures the overall emotional connection be-tween the teacher and students as demonstrated by the positive tones and behaviourin the classroom. Negative climate captures the negative aspects within the class-room climate such as anger and frustration as displayed by either students or theteacher in the classroom (Pianta et al., 2008). Teacher sensitivity refers to teachers’awareness of individual student learning needs and the degree to which theyrespond appropriately. Last, regard for student perspectives captures the extent towhich the teacher considers student points of view during classroom activities andgives students opportunities to make choices and have responsibilities (Piantaet al., 2008). According to the test authors, the CLASS emotional support domaindemonstrates strong criterion validity with other measures of similar constructs(Pianta et al., 2008). The emotional support domain was chosen for the currentanalysis because the dimensions included in this domain (positive climate, negativeclimate, teacher sensitivity and regard for student perspectives) align most directlywith what we consider appropriate teacher support for the various components ofsocial–emotional competence.

Observers completed a 2-day training session conducted by certified trainers ofthe CLASS. During the testing phase of the training session, observers wererequired to watch five 20-min video segments and provide ratings. Of the totalratings produced, 80% of the ratings were required to be within one point of themaster codes (provided by the test publishers). All raters met or exceeded thisinitial level or reliability. Following the initial training requirements, observers alsocompleted a dual-coding live session during data collection to maintain reliabilitystandards. Intraclass correlations for those dual-coded segments were high andranged from 0.69 to 0.88, with an average correlation of 0.80.

As outlined by the authors of the measure, observation cycles consisted of four20-min intervals followed by a 10-min rating interval. Scores across all four cycleswere then averaged and combined to create a mean emotional support score forevery classroom.

Emotional expressiveness/regulationThe Social Competence and Behaviour Evaluation (SCBE-30) rating scale is

designed to be used by either teachers or parents to examine various areas ofsocial–emotional competence, including a child’s emotion regulation, expressionof emotions, social awareness and relational skills (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996).In the current study, teachers were asked to complete the 30-item SCBE at theend of the school year for every child in the study. Scores on the SCBE were aggre-gated into three 10-item scales: (i) angry/aggressive (e.g. displays anger, becomeseasily frustrated and engages in dysregulated behaviours: displays defiance, hits,bites or kicks); (ii) anxious/withdrawn (e.g. displays sad, unhappy and fearfulemotions and engages in dysregulated behaviour by remaining apart from thegroup and avoiding new situations); and (iii) cooperative/sensitive (e.g. comfortsother children, accepts compromises and is attentive towards younger children).Angry/aggressive and anxious/withdrawn scales represent negative indicatorsof emotional expressiveness and regulation, whereas the cooperative scale is apositive indicator of relational skills, particularly prosocial behaviours.

Test authors and later researchers report high internal consistency andvalidity (Denham et al., 2003; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997; Shields et al., 2001).Examination of the current sample revealed Cronbach’s alphas of 0.91, 0.82 and0.81, for the angry/aggressive, cooperative/sensitive and anxious/withdrawnscales, respectively.

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Social problem solvingSocial problem-solving skills in preschoolers were measured via the Challeng-

ing Situations Task (CST; Denham, Bouril & Belouad, 1994). During this pictorial,forced-choice, direct assessment, preschoolers were asked how they would feel inthree problem scenarios where they were the recipients of an aggressive act by apeer. After stating how he or she would feel (happy, sad, angry or just okay), thepreschooler was asked how he or she would choose to respond. Behaviouralresponses consisted of socially competent, aggressive, avoidant or crying options(also represented pictorially). For example, the preschooler was presented with apicture that shows the antagonist ‘Bobby’ knocking over a tower of blocks that‘Johnny’ just completed. The examiner then asked the preschooler, ‘When thathappens to you, how do you feel?’ and presented the preschooler with the cardswith faces depicting the following emotions: happy, sad, angry or just okay.Finally, the preschooler was presented pictures of behavioural response options.Similar to the Affect Knowledge Test (AKT), the CST also underwent a recentrevision to shorten the overall administration time. Previous versions of the CSTrequired the preschooler to also report how the peer would feel, then what the peerwould do and how the child would feel in the end.

The present study used integrated emotional and behavioural response combi-nations that are theoretically and empirically based (Denham et al., 2012; Orobiode Castro, 2004; Orobio de Castro, Bosch, Veerman & Koops, 2003):angry/aggressive and sad/socially competent. Sad emotion and socially compe-tent response choices were summed (α=0.51). Likewise, angry emotion andaggressive response choices were summed (α=0.54). Sad choices have been foundto relate to school adjustment and kindergarten academic success (Denham et al.,2014). Conversely, children who most often reported they felt angry and selectedaggressive response choices were considered as possessing less-competent socialproblem-solving skills.

Emotion knowledgeDesigned for use with the preschool population, the AKT uses puppets to act

out emotion-provoking situations (Denham, 1986; Denham & Couchoud, 1990a,1990b; Denham et al., 2002). Children were asked to identify four emotions (happy,sad, angry and afraid – both expressively and receptively) immediately before theadministration of the various puppet scenarios. This labelling of emotions was im-mediately followed by a teaching phase where the examiner displayed each of thefour emotions while also showing the corresponding felt face (Denham, 1986).Children were asked to label the emotion the puppet would feel in both stereotyp-ical and nonstereotypical situations. In stereotypical situations, everyone in thesituation would feel the same way. In the nonstereotypical scenario, the puppetacted out an emotion different from what the child’s parent reported he or shewould experience in that situation. Thus, children must inhibit their emotionalresponse and recognize that the puppet is experiencing something different thanhe or she would feel in that situation (Denham, 1986).

The AKT was recently revised to shorten the overall administration time(Bassett & Denham, 2014). Results showed that items involving happiness didnot show adequate variability (including the expressive, receptive and stereotypi-cal situational items). Accordingly, the happiness items were removed for theshortened version of the measure. Following the removal of the happiness items,two parallel versions with similar internal consistency were created so that thebattery could be potentially given twice in a year (although it was only given once

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in this study). One-half of the sample received one version; the other half receivedthe other version. In a prior study, scores on the two versions resulted in very highcorrelations (r=0.92; Bassett & Denham). Each version contained 15 items (threeexpressive items, three receptive items, three stereotypical items and sixnonstereotypical items). Scoring for the recognition task (with expressive andreceptive items) was done such that a 0 was given for the wrong emotion and 1for the correct emotion. For the situation knowledge tasks (stereotypical andnonstereotypical), a 0 was given if the child chose the wrong emotion, a 1 wasgiven if it was the wrong emotion but right valence (positive/negative) and a 2was given if it was the correct emotion. The expressive and receptive items werethe same across both versions, whereas the stereotypical and nonstereotypical itemvaried across forms. Each of these versions yielded an emotion knowledge totalscore. The total score was calculated by first z scoring each item and then takingthe mean of the z scores. In this way, higher scores indicate higher levels ofemotion knowledge. Reliability analysis for all Head Start children with AKT dataresulted in Cronbach’s alphas within acceptable ranges (version 1 α=0.82; version2 α=0.78).

Preliteracy skillsThe PALS-PreK was designed to assess emerging literacy skills in children prior

to beginning kindergarten (Invernizzi et al., 2001). The PALS-PreK programmemeasures several key abilities. Name writing asks children to write their nameon a self-portrait. Upper-case recognition asks children to identify all 26 letters.Lower-case recognition was administered if they get 16 or more upper-case letterscorrect. Letter sounds was administered if children got nine or more lower-case let-ters correct. Beginning sound awareness asked children to produce beginningsounds associated with pictures. During print and word awareness, children wereread common nursery rhymes and were asked to identify various print concepts(e.g. pictures and words). During rhyme awareness, children were presented witha picture and the name of the object in the picture. They then had to point to a pic-ture that rhymes with the initial picture. Nursery rhyme awareness asked childrento provide the final rhyming word in common nursery rhyme (PALS-PreK;Invernizzi et al., 2001).

Townsend and Konold (2010) investigated the PALS factor structure using asample of 4518 children. Initially, half the sample was used in an exploratoryanalysis, which identified two factors that were confirmed in the other half ofthe sample using a confirmatory factor analysis. The present study uses thetwo-factor structure identified in their study. The alphabet knowledge factor isindicated by upper-case alphabet, lower-case alphabet and letter sounds(cross-loading). The print and phonological awareness factor was indicated byletter sounds (cross-loading), name writing, beginning sounds, print/wordawareness, rhyme awareness and nursery rhyme awareness.

Data Analysis

The first step in our data analysis was to run a confirmatory factor analysis instructural equation modelling (SEM) with the same structure identified in theTownsend and Konold (2010) study. Using our data, the model was found to fitthe data adequately ( χ2= 32, df=18, p=0.02; comparative fit index=0.92; rootmean square error of approximation=0.09) (Hu & Bentler, 1999). All paths weresignificant and had standardized path weights greater than 0.42, except for the

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T. W. Curby et al.

path from print and phonological awareness to letter sounds ( β=0.19, p=n.s.).However, the fit of the proposed structure was still adequate, and we wanted tohave factors that were comparable with the Townsend and Konold study, so weretained that path in the analyses. The alphabet knowledge factor was highlycorrelated with the print and phonological awareness factor (r=0.77, p< 0.001).Factor scores were output for further analysis.

To answer our research questions, one large model was constructed in an SEMframework that would answer our research questions. All variables, except gender(0= female, 1=male) and maternal education (0=high school education or less,1= some college or more), were Z-scored for the SEM analyses. Alphabet knowl-edge and print and phonological awareness were used as correlated outcomes.Control variables included gender, maternal education, attentional skills, ageand classroom emotional support. Predictors of interest included emotionalexpressiveness (angry/aggressive, cooperative sensitive or anxious/withdrawn),social problem solving (angry/aggressive or sad/socially competent) and emotionknowledge. All predictors were allowed to correlate by default and resulted in asaturated model with perfect fit, analogous to a regression. We used theTYPE=COMPLEX command with an MLR estimator in MPLUS software (Muthen& Muthen, 1998–2012) to adjust the standard errors to account for the nested na-ture of the data (i.e. students nested within teachers). SEM uses full-informationmaximum likelihood to account for the missing data, which leads to less-biased re-sults than listwise deletion.

RESULTS

Descriptive Statistics

Correlations, means and standard deviations for all variables are presented inTable 1. The relatively small sample size used in the present study makes the anal-yses more susceptible to outliers. Thus, prior to analysis, values that were greaterthan 3 standard deviations from the mean were made to be missing (Table 1).Correlations between variables were in the expected directions. In terms of controlvariables, gender (being male) was significantly positively correlated with lessattentional skill, emotional expressiveness/regulation (including being moreangry/aggressive and less cooperative/sensitive) and emotion knowledge. Olderchildren were less anxious/withdrawn, had more emotion knowledge and hadhigher scores on the print and phonological awareness outcome. Children whohad mothers with higher education levels had higher scores on both outcomes.Children who were rated by assessors as having more attentional skills were alsomore likely to be rated by teachers as more cooperative/sensitive and lessanxious/withdrawn and tended to perform better on the print and phonologicalawareness outcome.

Among the emotional expressiveness/regulation scales, being morecooperative/sensitive was negatively related to being angry/aggressive andanxious/withdrawn. In addition, higher cooperative/sensitive scores were relatedpositively to emotion knowledge and the alphabet knowledge outcome. Beingmore anxious/withdrawn was related to being less sad/socially competent as wellas having lower scores on the print and phonological awareness outcome. Socialproblem-solving skills (angry/aggressive and sad/socially competent) were nega-tively related to one another. Sad/socially competent responses on the CST werepositively related to emotion knowledge and both outcomes. Emotion knowledge

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2015)DOI: 10.1002/icd

Table1.

Zero-order

correlations

anddescriptive

statistics

Variable

12

34

56

78

910

1112

13

1Gen

der

(1=male)

—2

Age

(mon

ths)a

�0.24*

—3

Materna

leduc

ation

(1=somecolle

geor

more)

�0.02

0.11

—

4Atten

tion

alskillsa

�0.22*

0.11

0.12

—5

Classroom

emotiona

lsup

porta

�0.12

�0.17

�0.21

0.16

—6

Emotiona

lexp

ressiven

ess/

regu

lation

:an

gry/

aggressive

a0.24*

0.05

0.10

�0.13

�0.16

—

7Emotiona

lexp

ressiven

ess/

regu

lation

:coop

erative/

sensitivea

�0.47**

0.20

0.07

0.28**

0.08

�0.53**

—

8Emotiona

lexp

ressiven

ess/

regu

lation

:an

xiou

s/withd

rawna

0.14

�0.33**�0

.05

�0.33**�0

.01

0.09

�0.30**

—

9So

cial

prob

lem

solving:

angry/

aggressive

a�0

.14

0.05

0.13

�0.12

0.03

0.02

0.06

0.18

—10

Social

prob

lem

solving:

sad/socially

compe

tent

a�0

.12

0.08

�0.00

0.14

0.09

0.09

0.01

�0.23*

�0.42**

—

11Emotionkn

owledge

a�0

.30**

0.22*

0.21

0.06

�0.12�0

.18

�0.34**�0

.15

�0.02

0.32**

—12

Alpha

betkn

owledge

factor

a�0

.17

0.18

0.27*

0.15

0.01

0.04

0.32**

�0.18

�0.21

0.26*

0.41**

—13

Printan

dph

onolog

ical

awaren

essfactor

a�0

.21

0.24*

0.28*

0.25*

0.03

0.05

0.33

�0.30**�0

.11

0.39**

0.49**

0.86**

—

n88

8884

8691

8889

8784

8584

8686

Outlie

rs0

00

10

10

21

02

00

Raw

mean

0.49

59.30

0.19

2.77

6.03

1.45

3.89

1.42

0.20

0.36

0.06

0.00

0.00

Raw

stan

darddev

iation

0.50

4.60

0.40

0.36

0.28

0.62

0.77

0.59

0.20

0.26

0.43

1.00

0.90

Raw

minim

um0

42.00

01.80

5.42

1.00

2.20

1.00

0.00

0.00

�1.17

�2.16

�2.32

Raw

max

imum

165.00

13.00

6.69

3.30

5.00

3.50

0.83

1.00

0.58

1.02

1.50

a Variablewas

gran

d-m

eancentredforan

alysis.

*p<0.05,**p

<0.01,***p<0.001

Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2015)DOI: 10.1002/icd

T. W. Curby et al.

was positively related to both outcomes. Last, the PALS outcomes were positivelycorrelated with one another.

Results of the structural equation model are presented in Table 2. In terms of thealphabet knowledge outcome, preschoolers with mothers who had some college ormore had higher scores than those children with a mother with a high schooldiploma or less ( β=0.40, p<0.05). In addition, children in classrooms with moreemotional support had more alphabet knowledge ( β=0.11, p<0.05). In terms ofour predictors of interest, surprisingly, childrenwhowere rated by teachers asmoreangry/aggressive scored higher on alphabet knowledge ( β=0.28, p< 0.05). Chil-dren who were rated as more cooperative/sensitive behaviours performed signifi-cantly higher ( β=0.34, p<0.05). In addition, children with more emotionknowledge scored higher ( β=0.37, p< 0.05) on the alphabet knowledge outcome.

For the print and phonological awareness outcome, full model results indicatedno control variables were predictive. Teacher ratings of emotional expressiveness/regulation were particularly predictive of the outcome. Unexpectedly, angry/aggressive behaviours were once again positively related to the outcome( β=0.25, p<0.05). In addition, cooperative/sensitive ratings were positivelyrelated ( β=0.26, p<0.05) and anxious/withdrawn behaviours were negativelyrelated ( β=�0.12, p<0.01) to the outcome. Emotion knowledge was, once again,positively related to the outcome ( β=0.37, p< 0.05).

DISCUSSION

The aim of the current study was to determine the degree to which preschoolers’preliteracy skills were associated with facets of social–emotional competence

Table 2. Results of full structural equation models

Alphabet knowledgePrint and

phonological awareness

β SE t-ratio β SE t-ratio

Gender (1 =Male) 0.06 0.22 0.26 0.07 0.18 0.37Maternal Education(1 = some college or more)

0.40* 0.16 2.51 0.28 0.20 1.43

Attentional skillsa �0.03 0.13 �0.24 0.06 0.11 0.56Age (months)a 0.02 0.09 0.21 0.02 0.06 0.28Classroom emotional supporta 0.11* 0.04 2.50 0.08 0.06 1.40Emotional expressiveness/regulation:angry/aggressivea

0.28* 0.12 2.35 0.25* 0.12 2.00

Emotional expressiveness/regulation:cooperative/sensitivea

0.34* 0.14 2.53 0.26* 0.11 2.36

Emotional expressiveness/regulation:anxious/withdrawna

�0.02 0.06 �0.27 �0.12** 0.04 �2.98

Social problem solving:angry/aggressivea

�0.23 0.17 �1.35 0.00 0.13 0.01

Social problem solving:sad/socially competenta

0.04 0.23 0.16 0.19 0.17 1.10

Emotion knowledgea 0.37* 0.18 2.03 0.37* 0.16 2.27

aVariable was grand-mean centred for analysis.*p< 0.05, **p< 0.01, ***p< 0.001.

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Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy

(emotional expressiveness/regulation, social problem solving and emotion knowl-edge) above and beyond demographic characteristics, attentional abilities andclassroom emotional support. In general, there was much overlap in the predictorsacross the two preliteracy outcomes, with two of the three facets of emotionalexpressiveness/regulation and emotion knowledge being common. Notably,social problem solving was not predictive for either preliteracy outcome with theother predictors in the model.

Emotional Expressiveness/Regulation

Unexpectedly, teacher ratings of angry/aggressive behaviours were positivelyrelated to both alphabet knowledge and print and phonological awareness.Although cooperative/sensitive behaviours are considered ideal, children whoare perceived by their teachers as more angry/aggressive seemed to benefit interms of preliteracy skills. This may be because children who are moreangry/aggressive may be more assertive in the classroom environment, makingsure that they get the teachers’ help when needed. In fact, significant correlationshave been found between observed aggression and assertion strategies in earlychildhood (Ostrov, Pilat, & Crick, 2006).

To the extent that angry/aggressive behaviours are adaptive for the classroom,it should be noted that the mean for angry/aggressive behaviours was quite lowand even the maximum score was still in the midrange. Thus, this may alsosuggest that children were either not very angry/aggressive or were not uniformlyangry/aggressive across contexts. For example, children who may beangry/aggressive at a free play centre may not be during a shared book reading.Furthermore, this result needs to be understood in light of the statistical model.The model also included teacher ratings of cooperative/sensitive behaviours(thus controlling for their levels), and angry/aggressive behaviours were nega-tively correlated with cooperative/sensitive behaviours. Furthermore, Arnold,Kupersmidt, Voegler-Lee and Marchall (2012) found a significant negativeassociation between teacher-reported aggression and children’s preliteracy skills.However, when other predictors were added to the model, the relations becamestatistically positive. Similarly, when cooperative/sensitive behaviours wereremoved from our model in a post hoc analysis, angry or aggressive behaviourswere no longer significantly related to the outcomes. Thus, these analysessuggest that angry/aggressive behaviours while positively related to the out-comes were only related for those children who were angry/aggressive, whilenot being seen as uncooperative/insensitive.

Children who were more cooperative and sensitive tended to do better in termsof both alphabet knowledge and print and phonological awareness. Although notspecific to preliteracy outcomes, similar relations have been found between socialcompetence and early language development (Arnold et al., 2012; Cohen &Mendez, 2009; Ziv, 2013). It is important to consider the nature of the outcomesin understanding this finding. Literacy is an entirely social construct, in the sensethat the letters of the alphabet and print and phonemic representations do nothave an inherent meaning (e.g. the sounds of a language are not evident simplyby looking at the letter). Thus, learning letter shapes and sounds and ultimatelyarranging letters into words and so forth are inherently social tasks. As such,children who were more cooperative work better with others and may be betterable to engage with classroom tasks, whether they be centre tasks or explicit in-struction by the teacher, that are teaching these basic skills. Another consideration

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is that in the factor analysis, the path from print and phonological awareness toletter sounds was nonsignificant. Thus, associations that are found with the printand phonological awareness outcome do not speak much to the associations thatmay exist with letter sounds.

We also found that children’s anxious and withdrawn behaviours werenegatively related to print and phonological awareness. Consistent with our otherexplanations, we believe this has to do with the social nature of children’s class-room experiences. Preschoolers are often in groups while being taught. If childrenare not able to be a part of a group, the child may miss out on learning experiences.A child who is more anxious/withdrawn may avoid others or may be more inter-nally separated from others (e.g. perseverating on negative emotions and therebydistracting himself or herself from learning). The preschooler who avoids peerinteraction or who drives peers away may be more likely to wander or engagein listless and disconnected behaviours in the classroom. Thus, a child who is moreanxious/withdrawn is likely to not have as many learning experiences in thepreschool classroom. In fact, although it is not limited to preliteracy skills,preschoolers’ verbal ability was negatively associated with withdrawn/avoidantbehaviours in classroom and positively associated with connected interaction withpeers (Cohen & Mendez, 2009; Mendez, Fantuzzo & Cicchetti, 2002).

Emotion Knowledge

Children’s emotion knowledge was also related to both alphabet knowledge andprint and phonological awareness. This finding strengthens the argument thatemotion knowledge is an essential foundation to later success in school (Izard,2002; Izard et al., 2001) and may provide insight into the mechanism of preliteracyskill acquisition. To achieve a high emotion knowledge score, in addition to un-derstanding the emotion that would normally be expressed in a given scenario,preschoolers were required to accurately label an emotion that differed fromwhat he or she may think situationally appropriate. This ability to identify anemotion other than what he or she may experience is considered a higher-orderemotion knowledge skill. That is, children are required to put their own emo-tions ‘on hold’ while taking the perspective of another person. This higher-orderability may be indicative of more advanced cognitive development, which mayin turn allow superior performance on academic tasks (Denham, 2006b;Denham et al., 1990). Furthermore, a strong foundation in emotion knowledgemay ‘free up’ other cognitive resources (such as working memory), allowingthe preschooler to attend to the academic material presented by his or herteacher (Denham & Brown, 2010).

Social Problem Solving

Surprisingly, neither social problem solving that was angry/aggressive orsad/socially competent was predictive of either outcome when other predictorswere included in the model. Other research has found that sad/socially competentchoices were positively related to academic readiness (Denham et al., 2014). Nota-bly, zero-order correlations suggested a positive relation between sad/sociallycompetent responses and print and phonological awareness, which was consistentwith the study of Bierman et al. (2008) who found a positive correlation betweenCST competent responses and print awareness. The correlations also showed thatsad/socially competent choices were negatively related to anxious/withdrawn

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Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy

behaviours and positively related to emotion knowledge. Thus, the fact that thesetwo other variables were predictive tells us that they are better predictors but thatsad/socially competent choices are still aspects of emotional competence.

Control Variables

GenderPrevious research using the PALS measure and these factors as outcomes found

very limited support for any gender differences (Townsend & Konold, 2010). Ourresults mirror theirs in that there were no statistically significant gender differencesin either alphabet knowledge or print and phonological awareness. However,gender did have significant relations with our predictors of interest, suggestingthat gender may be a relevant facet of preschool classrooms, but not for the out-comes of interest when other predictors were in the model.

AgeAlthough there was almost a 2-year age difference between the oldest and

youngest children in this sample, there was no age effect to be found on preliteracyoutcomes. Notably, older children were less anxious/withdrawn and moreknowledgeable about emotions – two aspects of emotional competence that werepredictive of our outcomes.

Maternal educationConsistent with Curenton and Justice’s (2008) findings, childrenwho hadmothers

with some college or more had higher scores on alphabet knowledge than childrenwith mothers with less education. Alphabet knowledge included children’s abilityto identify upper-case and lower-case letters aswell as their respective sounds. Thesetasks are often the focus of early preliteracy instructional attempts made by parentsin the home environment, and thus, it is not surprising that children who hadmothers with more maternal education were more skilled in this area.

Attentional skillsAlthough it is plausible that children who evidenced more attentional abilities in

a self-regulation task might be able to either get more out of instruction in theclassroom or perform better on the PALS itself, this was not supported by our data.

Emotional supportAlphabet knowledge, which consisted of upper-case alphabet, lower-case al-

phabet and letter sounds, was only associated with emotional support. Emotionalsupport has been related to children’s achievement (Mashburn et al., 2008). Whatis it about emotional support that may facilitate alphabet knowledge? One reasonmay be that emotional support usually correlates with instructional support andthus may be a positive indicator of high-quality instructional practices. Anotherreason may be that emotional support measures the presence of a positive,sensitive climate where children are given responsibility and teachers do not con-trol children’s actions. Emotional support may lay the groundwork for contentarea instruction (Curby, Rimm-Kaufman & Abry, 2013). For example, during ashared book reading in circle time, an emotionally supportive teacher might besensitive to words that children may not have encountered before and spend extrainstructional time teaching those words.

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T. W. Curby et al.

Limitations

There were several limitations that warrant discussion. Preschoolers’ intelligenceor current academic ability was not controlled for in the current study. Clearly, un-derlying cognitive ability and/or academic ability may be positively associatedwith preliteracy skills (Lonigan, 2006). Furthermore, cognitive ability and social–emotional skills may best be thought of as having bidirectional relations withone another (Chen, Rubin & Li, 1997; Welsh, Parke, Widaman & O’Neil, 2001).Thus, the examination of the association between social–emotional competenceand preliteracy skills would also be strengthened by employing a longitudinaldesign.

Furthermore, this study only had children enrolled in Head Start. Head Start isa large federal programme, and thus, these findings may have broad reach. Thatbeing said, it is unclear whether findings would be stronger or weaker in privatepreschool programmes. Other analyses from this study that included both HeadStart and private preschool centres indicated that children who were in Head Startwere more angry/aggressive, tended to be less regulated/socially competent andhad lower social problem-solving skills (Denham et al., 2014).

Implications

Given the common predictors of alphabet knowledge and print and phonologicalawareness – which included angry/aggressive expressiveness/regulation,cooperative/sensitive expressiveness/regulation and emotion knowledge – thepresent study offers some support for the notion that similar processes areinvolved in the learning. The process likely involves children who were morecompetent in these areas being able to engage more in the classroom tasks thatsupport the learning of these preliteracy skills (Denham, 2006a). In this way, webelieve that the emotional competence skills used in the present study aremediated by children’s classroom engagement, a hypothesis that can be examinedin future studies that include engagement data.

Of instructional activities, kindergarten teachers spend more time on languageand literacy activities than any other subject (La Paro et al., 2009). Therefore,children who come into preschool with stronger preliteracy skills are ready forkindergarten in a way that children without those skills are not. The presentstudy’s findings of associations between domains of social–emotional competenceand domains of preliteracy skills suggest that social–emotional goals of classroomsare consistent with and may even promote preliteracy skills. In other words,social–emotional goals are not at cross-purposes with academic goals and mayhelp achieve them.

Furthermore, researchers should continue efforts to create social–emotionalassessment tools that may be easily implemented by educators. With effectivesocial–emotional competence assessment tools, educators may be better able toimplement targeted interventions for specific social–emotional skill deficits. Thepresent study suggests that these efforts may not only enhance the social andemotional skills of students but may also result in improved preliteracy skills.As illustrated above, social–emotional competence components rarely exist aselements in isolation. Rather, it is the interplay of social–emotional competenceand academic skills that combine to form the whole picture of academic readiness(Denham et al., 2012). Broadening the focus of intervention efforts to includesocial–emotional skills increases the likelihood that every child’s need is met bothacademically and socially.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Inf. Child. Dev. (2015)DOI: 10.1002/icd

Social–Emotional Competence and Preliteracy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment grant R01 HD051514-02 to Susanne A. Denham. This paper wascompleted in partial fulfilment of the second author’s dissertation.

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