ABSTRACT The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) has been used extensively to investigate children’s understanding of emotion. The present study aimed at investigating the TEC’s factorial structure, its measurement invariance across age and gender, and defining age-referred TEC scores, in a large sample of 1,478 children (755 males, 723 females) aged between 3 and 10 years. Confirmatory factor analysis of the data yielded support for the original psychometric structure of the TEC, which is based on three developmental domains of emotion understanding: external, mental, and reflective. Measurement equivalence was supported across age and gender groups. We also obtained normative data for interpreting TEC outcomes and defined the corresponding normative pattern of development across six-month age intervals. Overall, our findings suggest that the TEC is a robust instrument for investigating emotion understanding in children aged 3 to 10 years. The limitations of the study and the potential use of the TEC are discussed.

中文翻译：

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评估情绪理解测试 (TEC) 的因子结构和测量不变性：一项针对 3-10 岁儿童的大型横断面研究

摘要 情绪理解测试 (TEC) 已被广泛用于调查儿童对情绪的理解。本研究旨在调查 TEC 的因子结构、其跨年龄和性别的测量不变性，并在 1,478 名 3 至 10 岁儿童（755 名男性，723 名女性）的大样本中定义年龄相关的 TEC 分数。数据的验证性因素分析为 TEC 的原始心理测量结构提供了支持，该结构基于情绪理解的三个发展领域：外部、心理和反思。跨年龄和性别组支持测量等效性。我们还获得了用于解释 TEC 结果的规范数据，并定义了跨六个月年龄间隔的相应规范发展模式。全面的，我们的研究结果表明，TEC 是一种强大的工具，可用于调查 3 至 10 岁儿童的情绪理解。讨论了研究的局限性和 TEC 的潜在用途。