Vladimir Takšić

The role of emotional intelligence (EI) in the academic context has been steadily established, together with its impact on students’ academic achievement, well-being, and professional success. Therefore, this study examined the development of a key EI ability—emotional understanding—throughout secondary school and explored its impact on students’ academic achievement (maternal language and mathematics) at the end of this cycle, using the Vocabulary of Emotions Test. A total of 222 students were followed over the entire 3-year secondary cycle, using a three-wave longitudinal design spanning from 10th to 12th grade. At the first wave, participants were aged between 14 and 18 years (M = 15.4; SD = 0.63), with 58.6% being female. Overall, the results of Latent Growth Curve modeling indicated that students’ emotional understanding increased over the secondary school cycle. While student’s gender predicted the emotional understanding change patterns throughout secondary school, student’s GPA in 10th grade did not. Moreover, the initial levels of ability-based emotional understanding predicted students’ achievement in maternal language at the end of the cycle. Our findings offer valuable insights into how EI skills can contribute to academic endeavors in late adolescence and will explore their impact on educational settings.

Emotional Literacy (EL) is a well-designed, field-tested curriculum that enhances social, emotional, and academic learning. A total of 565 students, 53% female, from 17 elementary schools, participated in the study. Approximately half of the students participated in the eight-week-long EL program, while the other half was in control conditions. Both the experimental and control group fulfilled the same set of trait and ability emotional intelligence measures in three timepoints: pre-, immediately after, and six months after the program. The effect of the EL program was different for girls and boys at different measurement points. Boys placed in experimental group improved their scores at both post-treatment measurements, meaning that they rated themselves and felt more emotionally competent after being a part of the EL program. Emotional understanding improved consistently with time, measured with both the Vocabulary of Emotions Test (VET) and Test of Emotional Understanding (TEU), regardless of the participation in the EL program. The effect of maturation was slightly more visible in girls, and girls had consistently better scores on the VET and TEU tests than boys. The feedback from school psychologists working with children was positive; they agreed that the children responded well to the activities and willingly participated.

The aim of the study is to examine the moderating role of sports performance in the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and stress coping strategies. In a sample of 171 elite and 169 non-elite athletes, EI was found to be related to task-oriented strategies, and completely unrelated to emotion-oriented strategies. Sport performance moderates the relationship between managing and regulating emotions and using avoidant coping strategies, in a way that non-elite athletes with higher scores on this EI subscale are more likely to use distraction-oriented coping.

The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Emotional Competence Questionnaire (IIECQ) was developed from the Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire, addressing some of its content issues. Measurement invariance of the two-factor IIECQ model (interpersonal and intrapersonal emotional competence factors) was examined across countries and gender groups using a sample of 998 students from five different countries (Slovenia, Russia, Croatia, India, and theCzech Republic). Our results supported partial scalar invariance of the IIECQ across countries with three items having varying intercepts in different countries. Scalar invariance was fully confirmed across gender groups. Latent means for the two IIECQ factors were compared between the five countries and the two gender groups. While men and women reported similar levels of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional competences, significant differences were observed between some of the countries. To assess the construct validity of the IIECQ, correlations were examined between the IIECQ subscale scores and the measures of emotion regulation, personality, and well-being. In general, correlations were low to moderate and in accordance with expectations, showing adequate convergent validity of the new scales. Overall, the IIECQ represents a psychometrically sound measure of the intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional competences, which are measured in the same way across the five countries examined as well as across genders.

In this paper, we discuss problems of comparing two European cultures in a study of emotional intelligence by relying on traditional back translation of the questionnaire and the scales used in the study (Holmström, Molander, & Takšić, 2008; Molander, Holmström, & Takšić, 2009, 2011). We compared Croatian and Swedish university students in using The Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire, which is an original Croatian questionnaire (Takšić, 1998; Takšić, Mohorić, & Duran, 2009) based on the emotional intelligence theory of Mayer and Salovey (1997). Initially, we found small differences in responding to emotional items between the two countries as revealed by traditional statistical methods. Here we illustrate a large increase of the initial differences by applying differential item functioning (DIF) procedures (Zumbo, 1999), and then reducing again differences by taken several important steps in analyzing the translated items. Most important in these latter procedures was a new translation to Swedish by a native Croatian-speaking translator.

Emotional intelligence (EI) and its measures have been widespread across several countries and cultures and the need for valid and robust measures that could expand research on international settings is on the current agenda. This study aimed to assess the measurement invariance of a widely used self-report EI measure, Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ), in two cultural contexts (Portugal vs. Croatia). The ESCQ, a 42-item self-report EI scale which comprises three dimensions – Perceive and Understand Emotion, Express and Label Emotion and Manage and Regulate Emotion - was administered to 1,188 Portuguese and Croatian secondary students. The results showed that the ESCQ had satisfactory reliability and the three-factor structure was replicated on both country samples. Configural (χ²= 308.71,df =220,p< .01; RMSEA = .030, CFI = .956, TLI = .948) and partial metric (Δχ²= 9.102, Δdf =10,p= .522; ΔCFI = −.01, ΔRMSEA = .002) and scalar (Δχ²= 15.290, Δdf =21,p= .083; ΔCFI = .001, ΔRMSEA = .006) invariances were supported across groups. This EI measure invariance cross-cultural study highlighted cultural particularities related to emotional competence in Portugal and Croatia contexts and contributed to bring awareness to the validity of cross-cultural studies in the emotional abilities field.

Intergenerational transmission of memory is a process by which biographical knowledge contributes to the construction of collective memory (representation

The main goal of our research was to investigate whether the ability of emotional understanding can predict students’ school achievement over and above fluid intelligence and the Big Five personality factors. A sample of 493 pupils (45% girls) participated in this study (Mage = 12.61, SD = 1.12). According to our results, girls were slightly better than boys in understanding emotions. Girls also had a slightly higher GPA than boys, and reported engaging in more altruistic and prosocial behavior than boys. As expected, boys reported more aggressive behaviors than girls. Understanding emotions had a weak but significant effect on the prediction of aggressive behavior. It also accounted for an additional 5% (for boys) and 9% (for girls) of the variance of GPA, after controlling for fluid intelligence and personality factors. A better understanding of emotions is important for academic achievement, as well as for well-being and adjustment in the educational environment

Young adults in the United States, Croatia, and China described personal episodes of times when they felt especially good or bad about themselves. These self-esteem memories were either recent (episodes that occurred during the previous 4 weeks) or remote (episodes that occurred between the ages of 10 and 15). Systematic content differences between memories of positive and negative self-worth were apparent primarily for remote rather than for recent memories. Across cultures, long-lasting positive memories frequently represented achievement themes, whereas negative memories frequently represented social themes. Links between achievement success and positive self-regard, and between social distress and negative self-regard, are explained using theories of self-esteem and autobiographical memory.

Cognitive impairment impinges significantly on the quality of life. Previous research revealed that anaemia can have a major influence on cognitive functioningt. The article is a correlational study examining the relationship between anaemia levels and cognitive functioning in adult patients. Sixty-one patients (both inpatients and outpatients), among them 30 anemic and 31 non-anaemic, 33 female and 28 male, aged 32-60 (median 43) treated at the Dept. of Hematology, Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka, Croatia were analysed according to hemoglobin (Hb) level and cognitive ability. Assessment of cognition (convergent inductive thinking) was performed by the Complex reactiometer Drenovac (CRD). The results showed that anaemia significantly undermines cognitive functions in adult patients (p < 0.01). Even in non-anaemic patients (Hb higher than 120 g/L), Hb level is related to better cognitive ability.