Promoting emotional competencies and positive emotions in autism, youth, and school contexts

Abstract

This cumulative thesis aims to advance new perspectives in education, particularly in understanding and promoting emotional competencies (EC) and positive emotions (PE), foundations of emotional development. This work proposes multimethod approaches and new psychoeducational tools. The thesis follows two parallel yet complementary research axes addressing these topics in youth across sensitive developmental conditions or periods, notably autistic individuals, as well as in students at school.The first axis addresses PE and emotion regulation (ER), a particular EC, in autism. Study 1 investigates the association between visual attention to cute-featured stimuli intended to induce PE and autism symptom severity and social skills in early childhood. Study 2 addresses the efficacy and the acceptability of a psychoeducational intervention targeting positive emotion regulation (PER) in autistic youth. The results suggest that while attention to stimuli eliciting PE may be reduced in autistic children with higher symptom severity, PER remains a malleable and trainable competency.The second axis extends to psychoeducational tools supporting EC and used in collective and naturalistic settings. Studies 3 and 4 examine the acceptability of play-based approaches, particularly the newly designed chEERS board games. They seek to answer local educational public policies needs by proposing new socio-emotional learning (SEL) tools for primary and secondary schools. Students’ satisfactory experience with the chEERS games highlight their potential for SEL.The final section examines the contributions of our findings and of the novel psychoeducational tools in the field of special education. The dissertation further outlines the limitations and the future directions.