Some decades of research on emotional development have underlined
the contribution of several domains to emotion understanding in childhood. Based
on this research, Pons and colleagues (Pons & Harris, 2002; Pons, Harris & Rosnay,
2004) have proposed the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) which assesses 
nine domains of emotion understanding, namely the recognition of emotions, based 
on facial expressions; the comprehension of external emotional causes; impact of
desire on emotions; emotions based on beliefs; memory influence on emotions;
possibility of emotion regulation; possibility of hiding an emotional state; having
mixed emotions; contribution of morality to emotion experiences. This instrument
was administered individually to 182 Portuguese children aged between 8 and 11
years, of 3rd and 4th grades, in public schools. Additionally, we used the Socially
in Action-Peers (SAp) (Rocha, Candeias & Lopes da Silva, 2012) to assess TEC’s
criterion-related validity. Mean differences results in TEC by gender and by socioeconomic
status
(SES) were analyzed. The
results of the TEC’s
psychometric
analysis
were
performed in
terms
of items’
sensitivity and
reliability (stability,

test-retest).
Finally,
in order to explore the
theoretical
structure
underlying

TEC

a Confirmatory Factor Analysis and a Similarity Structure Analysis were
computed. Implications of these findings for emotion understanding assessment
and intervention in childhood are discussed