Children Who Understand Emotions Read Better — A Study Tracking 356 Kids Proves It

Children whose emotion understanding improved in preschool scored higher on reading tests a year later in elementary school — a stronger predictor than vocabulary.

Introduction: The Myth That “Social Skills Are One Thing, Academics Are Another”

What matters most in preschool? Many parents think “learning to read” or “knowing numbers.” As school enrollment approaches, the focus shifts to academic readiness, and things like playing well with friends or managing emotions get pushed aside as “nice to have, but can wait.”

But what if the ability to understand emotions predicted reading achievement? What if the ability to resolve peer conflicts determined how well a child engages in learning once they reach elementary school?

A study tracking 356 four-year-olds from low-income families in Pennsylvania from preschool through elementary school shows, with data, that the dichotomy of “social skills are social skills and academics are academics” is simply wrong.

The Core Research Question

A research team from Penn State (Nix, Bierman, Domitrovich, Gill) asked:

“Do children who develop social-emotional skills in preschool show better academic and behavioral adjustment in elementary school a year later?”

They tested three specific hypotheses:

1. Does improved emotion understanding in preschool predict elementary school reading achievement?
2. Does improved social problem-solving ability contribute to academic outcomes?
3. Is there a synergistic effect when academic and social-emotional skills are developed together?

Head Start REDI: Teaching Academics and Social Skills Simultaneously

Program Structure

Head Start REDI (Research-Based, Developmentally-Informed) is an intervention that systematically integrates two pillars into the existing Head Start program.

Language and Literacy Pillar:

• Dialogic Reading — Interactive book reading using prepared questions and props, where children actively participate rather than passively listen
• Phonological Awareness Games — Sound play with rhymes, alliteration, and phonemes
• Alphabet Center Activities — Hands-on, manipulative letter learning

Social-Emotional Pillar (Preschool PATHS Curriculum):

• Emotion Recognition and Labeling — “How does this friend’s face look?” “What do we call this feeling?”
• Social Problem-Solving Training — Practice generating solutions independently when peer conflicts arise, focusing on “self-regulation and peaceful conflict resolution”
• Prosocial Behavior and Friendship — Themes of helping, sharing, and being a friend

Teacher Support

Teachers received an initial 3-day intensive training, followed by a 1-day booster during the school year. Weekly support included 3 hours of in-classroom observation coaching and 1 hour of planning meetings. Teachers also received separate training in positive behavior management and emotion coaching techniques.

Study Design and Participants

• Design: Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) — 44 Head Start classrooms (across 25 centers) randomly assigned to intervention or control
• Participants: 356 children aged 4
  • 42% African American or Latino
  • All from low-income families
  • 54% female
• Follow-up: 97% retained at end of preschool, 95% at end of kindergarten
• Transition context: Children dispersed across 33 school districts, 82 schools, and 202 kindergarten classrooms — allowing researchers to test whether effects persisted in completely different environments

What Was Measured

In preschool (pre- and post-intervention):

• Expressive vocabulary (Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test)
• Phonological awareness (TOPEL blending and elision subtests)
• Emotion understanding (Assessment of Children’s Emotion Skills) — reading facial expressions, identifying emotions in stories
• Social problem-solving (Challenging Situations Task) — an open-ended task where children generate solutions to peer conflict scenarios
• Positive social behavior — teacher and parent ratings

In elementary school (kindergarten):

• Reading achievement (composite of print knowledge, word decoding, and story recall)
• Learning engagement (curiosity and self-discipline scale + reverse-scored inattention)
• Positive social behavior

Results: Changes During Preschool

Children in the REDI program showed significantly greater growth than the control group across all domains.

• Emotion understanding: β = .36 (p < .01)
• Social problem-solving: β = .36 (p < .01)
• Positive social behavior: β = .33 (p < .01)
• Expressive vocabulary: β = .25 (p < .05)
• Phonological awareness: β = .49 (p < .001)

Effects appeared in both social-emotional and academic domains. So far, this is what you might expect. The truly interesting part comes next.

Key Finding: Children Who Understood Emotions Read Better

What Predicted Reading Achievement One Year Later

The research team analyzed whether each of the five skill improvements in preschool independently contributed to elementary school reading scores. Here’s what they found:

Emotion understanding was the single strongest predictor of reading achievement. Stronger than vocabulary. Stronger than phonological awareness. It remained independently significant even after controlling for all other variables.

What Predicted Learning Engagement

The study also measured how well children focused, showed curiosity, maintained self-discipline, and engaged in learning in elementary school.

Here, positive social behavior was the strongest predictor. Children who got along well with peers, helped others, and weren’t aggressive were more focused and actively engaged in learning a year later.

Why Would Emotion Understanding Affect Reading?

This is the most intriguing question in the study. Emotions and reading seem like completely different domains — how are they connected?

The researchers explain through executive function as the mediating mechanism:

Training in recognizing and labeling emotions, and practicing generating solutions in conflict situations, strengthens working memory, inhibitory control, and attention shifting — core executive functions. These same executive functions are essential not only for emotion regulation but also for focusing on learning tasks and processing information.

In simpler terms, the process of “thinking about why a friend is upset and choosing among possible solutions” builds a child’s mental muscle for organizing thought. And that same muscle is used for decoding letters and following the flow of a story.

Social-emotional education wasn’t just teaching children “how to be nice” — it was broadening their cognitive foundation.

Another Discovery: Different Mechanisms for Different Contexts

When the research team analyzed by race, an interesting difference emerged.

• For European American children, phonological awareness (literacy skills) more strongly predicted learning engagement
• For African American children, emotion understanding more strongly predicted learning engagement

The same program didn’t work the same way for every child. This finding suggests that the one-size-fits-all equation of “school readiness = literacy” may not be sufficient for some children. For certain children, the ability to navigate emotions may be a more critical key to school adjustment.

Practical Takeaways

Social-Emotional Education Is Not “Extra”

The strongest message of this study is that social-emotional education in preschool is a direct foundation for academic success. The mindset of “emotion coaching is nice, but let’s focus on reading first” may be a false dichotomy. The ability to understand emotions is itself connected to the ability to learn to read.

The Synergy of Teaching Both Together

The REDI program didn’t separate academics and social-emotional learning — it integrated them within a single curriculum. During dialogic book reading, children discussed characters’ emotions. In emotion lessons, they practiced expressing themselves with language. This integrated approach was more effective than teaching each domain in isolation.

This Can Happen at Home Too

Even without a structured program, the core insight of this research is applicable to everyday life. Asking “How do you think this character feels right now?” while reading a picture book, or prompting “What do you think we could do?” when a peer conflict arises — these conversations simultaneously build a child’s emotion understanding and problem-solving skills.

Limitations

• The relationship between preschool skill gains and elementary school outcomes is correlational, not definitively causal. Unmeasured variables may have played a role
• In direct group comparisons, reading achievement and learning engagement did not show significant differences — indirect effects were only confirmed through mediation analysis. The composite scoring may have diluted individual effects
• Overall, effect sizes were small. While statistically significant, the real-world difference may not be large
• The quality of elementary schools children transitioned to may have influenced outcomes. Follow-up analyses suggested effects were more persistent for children who entered lower-quality schools

Final Thoughts

The message of this research is counterintuitive yet clear:

One of the most “academic” investments you can make in preschool is helping children develop the ability to understand emotions.

Reading a friend’s facial expression, generating solutions in a conflict, putting a name to one’s own feelings — these practices translated into the ability to decode text and comprehend stories in the classroom a year later. Social skills and academics don’t operate in separate silos. They grow from the same root.

Source: Nix, R. L., Bierman, K. L., Domitrovich, C. E., & Gill, S. (2013). Promoting children’s social-emotional skills in preschool can enhance academic and behavioral functioning in kindergarten: Findings from Head Start REDI. Early Education and Development, 24(7). https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2013.825565