Emotional Intelligence and scholastic achievement in pre-adolescent children

Previous research has reported an association between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and scholastic achievement in adolescent samples; however, this relationship has not yet been studied in pre-adolescent samples. The current study was the first to explore the relationship between ability EI and scholastic achievement in pre-adolescent children, using a newly created measure of EI for younger children - the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test - Early Years (SUEIT-EY). Four hundred and seven girls and boys between the ages of 9 and 13 years were assessed on the SUEIT-EY, and scholastic results were collected for literacy and numeracy ability. Results indicated that a significant relationship existed between the 'Understanding and Analysing Emotions' (UAE) branch of the SUEIT-EY and measures of achievement in literacy and achievement in numeracy, for boys and girls, over and above the effect of age. Sequential Multiple Linear Regression Analyses found earlier developing UAE abilities to better predict scholastic achievement variables than the more complex UAE abilities, and accounted for 11% of the variation of both literacy and numeracy scores.