Peer-reviewed article
The effect of structured picturebook narrative intervention on emotional understanding in 5-6-year-old Chinese children.
Ni M ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tested whether reading picture books with a focus on emotions for 8 weeks could help 5-6-year-old children in China understand emotions better. Nearly 100 children were randomly split into two groups: one that received the picture book intervention and one that did not. Children who received the intervention showed significantly better results in recognizing emotions, understanding what causes emotions, and making inferences about emotions compared to the control group.
Key points
- 97 children aged 5-6 years were randomly assigned to intervention (n=49) or control (n=48) groups
- The intervention consisted of 8 weeks of structured picturebook narrative sessions focused on emotions
- Intervention group showed significantly greater improvements in emotion recognition, understanding emotional causes, and emotional inference (all p < 0.001)
- Effect sizes were large, ranging from Cohen's d = 1.12 to 1.62
- The intervention was shown to be effective for enhancing emotional understanding in young children in China
Limitations
The study does not report whether improvements persisted beyond the post-test measurement period or whether effects generalised to children from different regions of China or different cultural backgrounds. The document does not detail what specific content or techniques were used in the picturebook narratives.
Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of an 8-week, structured picturebook narrative intervention on emotional understanding among 5-6-year-old children in eastern China. A total of 97 children were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n = 49) or a control group (n = 48). The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) was administered at pre-test and post-test. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant group×time interaction effect, with the intervention group showing significantly greater improvements in emotion recognition, understanding of emotional causes, and emotional inference (all p < 0.001). Between-group effect sizes (Cohen's d) ranged from 1.12 to 1.62, indicating large intervention effects. These findings confirm that structured, emotion-focused picturebook narrative intervention effectively enhances young children's emotional understanding, providing culturally relevant evidence for early childhood social-emotional education in the Asia-Pacific region.