Predictors of emotional awareness during childhood

Emotional awareness, the ability to identify and describe one’s own emotions, and those of other people, has been widely studied in adult samples, while only few studies have been conducted during childhood. Aim of the present study was to investigate the predictability of the main variables usually associated with the study of emotional awareness. The LEAS-C was administered to a group of 781 children aged 8 to 13 years old. The results showed that both gender and verbal skills are important predictors of children’s emotional awareness. Moreover, cognitive ability and emotion recognition also predicted LEAS-C scores. Finally, age emerged as a significant predictor of the complexity of children’s emotional awareness. The assessment of children’s emotional awareness may be significant for different health-related purposes, e.g. prevention and psychological support.