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The following material is excerpted from Facilitating emotional self-regulation in preschool children: Efficacy of the Early HeartSmarts® program in promoting social, emotional and cognitive development. Read or download a free copy of the complete monograph.
In their review of recent advances in neuroscience, Immordino-Yang and Damasio (2007: 3) conclude that the "processes of emotion" have a profound effect on the very elements of cognition targeted in education – "learning, attention, memory, decision making and social functioning".1 This accords with research in psychophysiology which shows that learning effective emotion regulation techniques can significantly enhance attention, memory recall, comprehension, reasoning ability, creativity and task performance in adults and children (see the research review in McCraty et al., 2006).
Moreover, Allan Schore’s (1994) landmark multidisciplinary synthesis of the enormous body of research on the neurobiology of early childhood development shows that learning how to process and self-regulate emotional experience is the earliest, most fundamental socioemotional skill, one which not only facilitates neurological growth but also determines the potential for subsequent psychosocial development.
Yet as fundamental as emotion is to all aspects of psychosocial development, our K–12 educational system remains woefully deficient in teaching children effective strategies for understanding and regulating their feelings and emotions. In general, there is a predominant focus on teaching children purely "academic" skills without providing adequate education in the socioemotional foundations underlying the development of the very cognitive capacities required for academic performance. This is exacerbated by the problem that a disturbing number of children begin school lacking the basic socioemotional skills needed to learn and get along with others within a school setting. As Boyd and her colleagues point out:
"Knowing the ABCs is not enough. To be prepared for school, children also must be excited and curious about learning and confident that they can succeed (motivational qualities). They must be able to understand the feelings of others, control their own feelings and behaviors, and get along with their peers and teachers (socioemotional skills). Indeed, kindergarten teachers rate these motivational and socioemotional skills as more important to school success than being able to hold a pencil or read. They want children to be ready for learning – able to cooperate, follow directions, demonstrate self-control and ‘pay attention’"
– (Boyd et al., 2005: 2)
In preschoolers and school-age children, problems in socioemotional development typically manifest themselves as challenging, socially disruptive patterns of behavior that, without intervention, can evolve into persistent antisocial behavior, such as physical aggression and bullying and ultimately adolescent delinquency (Powell et al., 2003; Wilson et al., 2001). For their teachers and classmates, these disruptive behaviors are a major challenge to educational success because children with socioemotional problems deflect valuable time, energy and attention from the entire classroom learning experience (Raver and Knitze, 2002).
As of 2002, estimates of national prevalence rates of young children with psychosocial problems were between 10% and 21% (Powell et al., 2003). According to Boyd et al. (2005: 1), kindergarten teachers report that about 20% of children entering kindergarten lack the requisite social and emotional skills to be "ready" for school. Moreover, rates of young children whose behavior displays aggression, delinquency, or hyperactivity were estimated to be as high as 25% (Raver & Knitze, 2002). And children living in poverty, which disproportionately affects ethnic minorities, are at an increased risk for socioemotional, behavioral and learning problems (Raver & Knitze, 2002). Indeed, as many as 30% of elementary school children from low-income families and about the same proportion of preschoolers in Head Start programs do not have the necessary socioemotional skills for school (Boyd et al., 2005).
In short, for young children at the beginning of their education, the deficiency in socioemotional skills is often an insurmountable handicap:
"They enter kindergarten unable to learn because they cannot pay attention, remember information on purpose, or function socially in a school environment. The result is growing numbers of children who are hard to manage in the classroom. These children cannot get along with each other, follow directions, or delay gratification. They show belligerence and aggression in the classroom and on the playground."
– (Boyd et al., 2005: 2)
To rectify this problem of young children with missing or less-than-adequate socioemotional skills, the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) has developed an intervention program specifically targeted to equip children aged three to six with the foundational socioemotional skills for school. Called Early HeartSmarts (EHS; Institute of HeartMath, 2008), the program was designed to train teachers to guide and support young children in learning several key age-appropriate emotional and social competencies, with the goal of facilitating the children’s emotional, social and cognitive development. Based on almost two decades of research on the psychophysiology of emotions and heart–brain communication (McCraty et al., 2005; McCraty et al., 2006; Tiller, McCraty, & Atkinson, 1996), the EHS program is the latest in a series of programs3 IHM has developed to teach schoolchildren emotional self-regulation techniques (Arguelles, McCraty, & Rees, 2003).
Research has shown HeartMath’s programs to be effective in improving emotional stability and psychosocial functioning and in increasing academic performance (Arguelles et al., 2003; Bradley et al., 2007; McCraty, 2005; McCraty et al., 1999).
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