OUT to IN: an Outdoor Body-oriented Intervention Program to Improve Preschoolers' Social-emotional Competence

Emotion Understanding

时间窗: 10 weeks

Will be assessed through three tasks developed by the Focus on Emotions Group (focusonemotions.nl): emotion discrimination (children are asked to place six cards, whereby they could choose between two categories happy versus unhappy faces, and angry versus sad faces cards), identification (children are asked to point to the facial expressions according to the emotion words instructed by the experimenter), and emotion attribution in a situational context (children are presented with eight illustrated emotion-evoking vignettes, designed to evoke happiness, anger, fear and sadness, and asked how the protagonist is feeling by pointing the facial expression and verbally identifying the emotion).

Self Regulation

时间窗: 10 weeks

Self-regulation is obtained through the the Day and Night task (DN), the Head Toes Knees and Shoulders task (HTKD) and the composite scale Externalizing Behaviors from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. In the DN task whenever the child sees a black card, must say "day", whenever the child sees a white card, must say "night". In the HTKS task whenever the child is asked to touch the feet, must touch the head and vice versa, when the child is asked to touch the shoulders, must touch the knees and vice versa. Externalizing behaviors is obtained through a composite scale which comprises two SDQ scales: behavior problems and hyperactivity. Caregivers are asked to rate their children's behavior in a 3-point likert scale, from 1 (not true) to 3 (certainly true).

Relationship skills

时间窗: 10 weeks

Empathy, Cooperation are Sociability are measured through the Study on Social and Emotional Skills Questionnaire (SSES), a caregivers and teacher report questionnaire. Caregivers and teachers were asked to fill in the Empathy (e.g. He/she can feel how others are feeling; He/she understands what others want), Cooperation (e.g., He/she works well with others; he/she likes to help others), and Sociability subscales (e.g., He/she has many friends; He/she makes friends easily) in a 5-point likert scale from one (completely disagree) to five (completely agree). Emotion communication is obtained through the Emotion Vocabulary Questionnaire, a caregiver-report which assesses whether children know and use emotion and/or mental state words, in a 2-point likert scale from 1 (no) to 2 (yes). The EVQ includes either basis emotions (e.g., happy, angry), complex emotions (e.g., jealous, disappointed), and mental state words (e.g. thinking, dreaming).

Interoceptive Accuracy

时间窗: 10 weeks

Interoceptive accuracy is measured through the Jumping Jack Paradigm (JJP). In the JJP task the child is first asked to sit in a chair looking at a calm screen for 3 minutes. Then examiner assesses his/her pulse to count the heart rate. Then the child is asked to choose one of the four circles, with different sizes that he/she believes it is equivalent to the heart rate. Then the child is asked to perform jumping jacks for 20 seconds. After the jumping jacks, the examiner measures her/his hear rate and asks the child to again choose one of the four circles that corresponds to his/her heart rate.

Motor Competence.

时间窗: 10 weeks

Motor Competence is assessed through the Test of Gross Motor Development-Second Edition (TGMD-2). Simple and playful exercises (throwing a ball, jumping, etc.) are performed to assess locomotion (running; galloping; hopping; leaping; jumping and sliding) and object control skills (striking; dribbling; catching; kicking; throwing and rolling). Each children performs every activity for two trials.