Emotional Literacy

Critical Evaluation of Interventions in Emotional Literacy

Introduction

Education, in the views of many philosophers, tends to provide intellectual and emotional knowledge and beauty to the mind, in order to tackle life's situations in a perfect manner. Education only makes sense when it nurtures the human mind and soul, alike. Emotional literacy is a term that refers to the programs that aim to facilitate the development of emotional intelligence, the skills of a person to interact effectively with one's self and his family, peers, teachers or other people around. It is important for any individual also applies to a person with Down syndrome, with some specifics relating to their needs. Accurately communicate their needs, obtain, manage anxiety, take an active role and control their language or even bring the way of relationship and living with peers according to rules, they become for these children and youth in basic skills to develop and we can influence them from early childhood intervention.

Discussion

Emotional Literacy and Emotional Intelligence (EI) are terms that are used interchangeably. EI seeks to strengthen the capacities of children, besides acting in collaboration with families and the environment. Thus, it stimulates the touch, sight, logical reasoning, creativity, and motor skills of the child. However, the person as a whole has other facets of his personality that can be developed from an early age. Emotionality and sociability, therefore, fall into this group of less intellectual capacity, but not less important, for developing a full and harmonious personality (Weare, 2003).

Salovey and Mayer (1990) originally defined Emotional Intelligence as “the ability to manage one's own feelings and emotions of others, to discriminate between them and use this information to guide thought and action” (Mayer et.al, 2008). This term was popularized by Goleman (1996) and, currently, is the basis for many programs for both children and adults. For those children and young people with Down syndrome, it is especially important to ensure they are increasingly able to adapt their emotions to different situations in which they operate, feel good about themselves and relate to others, so that they can move forward in their personal development (Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, 2008).

Emotional competence (sometimes in plural: emotional competencies) is a broad construct that includes various processes and causes a variety of consequences. One can understand the emotional competence as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes necessary to understand, express and regulate appropriately emotional phenomenon. Among the emotional competencies can distinguish two main groups:

1.Capacity for self-reflection (intrapersonal intelligence) identifies and regulates emotions appropriately,

2.Ability to recognize what others are thinking and feeling (interpersonal intelligence) skills social empathy, to capture the nonverbal communication, and so on (Vassilopoulos et.al, 2009).

At present, the study of human emotions is a strong field of psychology. Although there are different conceptions about the nature of emotions, most theorists agree that they are accompanied by patterns physiological responses (e.g., rate changes cardiac and respiratory changes in the concentrations hormone), cognitive, subjective aspects (e.g. perception of feeling for the excitement and verbal ...