The Intervention Research Of Emotional Painting On 5-6-year-old Children's Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation is closely related to the healthy development of children's psychological quality and the growth of the social adaptation of the children's emotion in the future.Painting is an important "language" for children,also a common nonverbal tool for them.5-6-year-old children are already equipped with the appropriate painting ability and cognitive ability,whose emotional understanding ability is also enhanced.At this stage children can use pictures to convey a variety of feelings and emotions.At present,the research on the use of painting to promote the development of children's emotion regulation are mostly concerned with the problem of negative emotions of children or case studies of emotional distress and aggressive behavior of special children.However,little has been focused on collective painting intervention of ordinary children in an ecological environment.And ordinary children's potential and hidden emotional problems can not be ignored,so this study explores the influence of emotional painting on 5-6-year-old children's emotional regulation.This research focuses on children aged 5-6 years.In Study 1,whether general painting learning on the selection and application of positive emotion regulation strategies benefits young children is inspected by using A Questionnaire on Preschool Children's Emotion Regulation Strategies for Parents.The result shows that there are significant differences between the experimental group(spending a total of 49.6 hours in average on after-school painting)and the control group(having no after-school painting)in the eight dimensions of emotional regulation strategies.Children in the experimental group are more likely to take positive emotion regulation strategies to seek for support,alternative activities,cognitive reconstruction,problem solving and self comfort instead of negative emotion regulation strategies such as passive coping,emotional venting and aggressive behaviors.Based on the results of study 1,and combined with emotional adjustment theory,painting education and therapy theory,a set of emotional painting intervention program for 5-6 year old children's emotion regulation is designed in Study 2.The program to intervene is used in the experimental class(total length of time is 9.5 hours for intervention)while the control class is not given the intervention.Finally,quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experimental class and the control class is made to compare the effect of the intervention.Through pre and post quantitative analysis of the experimental group and the control group,the difference between the experimental group and the control group was significant after the intervention of emotional painting from the analysis of the situation of children's emotional development.In the experimental class,the three aspects of emotion recognition and understanding,emotion expression and emotion regulation are better than those of the control class.In the use of emotion regulation strategies,the experimental class and the control class have significant differences in the aspects of seeking support and emotional venting and aggressive behavior.Children in the experimental group are more likely to take positive emotion regulation strategies to seek for support instead of negative emotion regulation strategies such as emotional venting and aggressive behaviors.From the qualitative analysis,we see that the way children in the experimental class do things has changed a lot.Passive coping,venting,aggressive behavior and other negative emotion regulation strategies are used before the intervention while self comforting,help seeking and problem solving strategies are used more frequently after the intervention.Besides,the emotional adjustment ability has improved significantly.The following conclusions are drawn through the analysis and discussion:Firstly,the study of painting is beneficial to increase the application of positive emotion regulation strategies and reduce the use of negative emotion regulation strategies.Secondly,emotional painting can promote the positive emotion regulation strategies,and reduce the negative emotion regulation strategies of the emotional release and aggressive behavior.It also shows that emotional painting plays an active role in promoting the development of emotion regulation.