The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ)<\/strong> is a standardized, self-report psychometric instrument designed to evaluate emotional awareness and functional aspects of emotion regulation in children and adolescents. Originally conceptualized and operationalized by Carolien Rieffe and colleagues (Rieffe et al., 2007, 2008), the EAQ operationalizes emotional awareness not merely as an intrapersonal competence or trait akin to adult alexithymia, but within an ecologically valid, functionalist framework of emotional development. The instrument comprises 30 items structured across six distinct subscales: (1) Differentiating Emotions<\/em>, (2) Verbal Sharing of Emotions<\/em>, (3) Not Hiding Emotions<\/em>, (4) Bodily Awareness of Emotions<\/em>, (5) Attending to Others\u2019 Emotions<\/em>, and (6) Analyses of Emotions<\/em> (also referred to as Analysis of One\u2019s Own Emotions<\/em>). Respondents rate each statement using a three-point Likert-type response format (0 = not true<\/em>, 1 = sometimes true<\/em>, 2 = true<\/em>). Psychometric investigations across diverse international pediatric cohorts demonstrate that the EAQ possesses robust construct validity, structural stability via confirmatory factor analysis, and adequate-to-high internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach\u2019s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .64 to .77 across dimensions. Furthermore, differential profiles across EAQ subscales demonstrate divergent associations with internalizing psychopathology, such that deficits in emotion differentiation and excessive somatic attributions reliably predict elevated symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, and social withdrawal. Consequently, the EAQ serves as an indispensable assessment tool within developmental psychology, pediatric neuropsychiatry, educational psychology, and clinical interventions aimed at emotional literacy<\/span>.<\/p>\n Emotion Awareness Questionnaire, EAQ, emotional competence, alexithymia, emotion differentiation, pediatric assessment, functionalist emotion theory, internalizing psychopathology, emotional regulation, psychometrics<\/p>\n The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire was developed by a team of developmental psychologists and psychometricians centered primarily at Leiden University in the Netherlands:<\/p>\n The primary objective of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire<\/a> (EAQ) is to provide a developmentally sensitive, multidimensional assessment of emotional awareness in youths aged 8 through 16 years. Historically, affective psychometrics relied heavily on adult models of alexithymia<\/a>\u2014such as the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)\u2014which were frequently adapted downward for pediatric populations. However, downward extensions often neglected the unique developmental constraints of childhood, including evolving vocabulary, immature metacognitive capabilities, and the dynamic social functions that affective experiences fulfill within peer networks and family systems.<\/p>\n Rieffe and colleagues established the EAQ to overcome these theoretical and empirical limitations. Grounded in a functionalist approach to emotion, the instrument posits that emotional awareness entails recognizing not only what one is feeling, but also understanding what those feelings signify within specific situational contexts, how somatic cues correspond to emotional states, and whether communication or concealment of affect serves an adaptive regulatory purpose. The clinical and research applications of the EAQ are multifaceted:<\/p>\n The psychological construct evaluated by the EAQ is emotional awareness, conceptualized as a multi-component cognitive and behavioral competence that enables an individual to identify, process, communicate, and utilize affective information in an adaptive manner. Unlike uni-dimensional conceptualizations, the EAQ decomposes this construct into six correlated yet conceptually distinct subscales:<\/p>\n This subscale evaluates the child\u2019s capacity to distinguish specific emotional states from one another (e.g., differentiating sadness from anger or fear) and to isolate affective distress from generalized physical discomfort. Children scoring low on this dimension experience pervasive emotional confusion (e.g., Item 1: “I am often confused or puzzled about what I am feeling”<\/em>; Item 7: “It is difficult to know whether I feel sad or angry or something else”<\/em>). This dimension reflects the child\u2019s emotional granularity, an essential prerequisite for targeted cognitive reappraisal and problem-focused coping.<\/p>\n This dimension measures the respondent\u2019s perceived ease and communicative willingness to express their internal affective states verbally to trusted peers and relational partners (e.g., Item 14: “I can easily explain to a friend how I feel inside”<\/em>). Deficits in this domain indicate expressive inhibition, communication barriers, or interpersonal mistrust, which hinder social support mobilization during acute stress.<\/p>\n This subscale assesses the degree to which a child overtly manifests or suppresses negative emotional states in social settings. High scores represent transparent emotional expression, whereas low scores signify deliberate emotional suppression and concealing behaviors (e.g., Item 15: “When I am angry or upset, I try to hide this”<\/em>; Item 20: “When I am upset, I try not to show it”<\/em>). In developmental psychopathology, chronic emotional suppression is a well-established cognitive risk factor for somatic complaints and internalized distress.<\/p>\n This subscale quantifies the child’s explicit attentiveness to somatic manifestations and visceral sensations accompanying affective arousal (e.g., Item 4: “When I am scared or nervous, I feel something in my tummy”<\/em>; Item 21: “My body feels different when I am upset about something”<\/em>). Interestingly, in pediatric cohorts, elevated bodily awareness without concomitant emotion differentiation often reflects somatic amplification, wherein physiological arousal is perceived as threatening or misinterpreted as physical illness rather than normative emotional activation.<\/p>\n Reflecting interpersonal empathy and social perceptual awareness, this dimension captures the child\u2019s spontaneous inclination to observe, care about, and interpret the emotional displays and psychological well-being of peers (e.g., Item 5: “It is important to know how my friends are feeling”<\/em>; Item 17: “If a friend is upset, I try to understand why”<\/em>). High scores signify robust prosocial orientation and social connectedness.<\/p>\n This metacognitive subscale gauges the child\u2019s deliberate cognitive efforts to understand the underlying causes, contexts, and behavioral implications of their emotional responses (e.g., Item 6: “When I am angry or upset, I try to understand why”<\/em>; Item 18: “When I have a problem, it helps me when I know how I feel about it”<\/em>). It assesses functional reflection\u2014the utilization of emotions as informative signals that guide subsequent decision-making and cognitive problem-solving.<\/p>\n The theoretical architecture of the EAQ is rooted in the functionalist perspective of emotions<\/strong> (Campos et al., 1989<\/a>; Gross, 1998<\/a>; Meerum Terwogt & Stegge, 1995). Under the functionalist paradigm, emotions are not considered dysregulatory disruptions or purely internal phenomenological events; rather, they are evolved, bi-directional regulatory processes that establish, maintain, or disrupt an organism’s relationship with its external physical and social environment.<\/p>\n According to this model, an emotion acts as an internal monitoring mechanism signaling that something significant to the individual’s goals, well-being, or survival is occurring. Consequently, successful emotion regulation requires an individual to accurately decode these internal signals. If a child lacks the capacity to differentiate emotional states (e.g., failing to identify fear), the functional value of that emotion\u2014which would ordinarily prompt avoidance, help-seeking, or danger mitigation\u2014is lost, resulting in maladaptive coping strategies such as rumination, panic, or behavioral withdrawal.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the EAQ synthesizes developmental adaptations of Lane and Schwartz’s (1987) Levels of Emotional Awareness (LEA) model<\/strong> and trait emotional intelligence theory<\/strong> (Petrides & Furnham, 2001). Lane and Schwartz posited that emotional awareness follows a structural-developmental hierarchy analogous to Piagetian cognitive stages, advancing from undifferentiated sensorimotor\/somatic sensations to discrete multi-layered blends of emotional experiences. Rieffe et al. acknowledged this trajectory by intentionally separating visceral\/somatic perception (Bodily Awareness<\/em>) from symbolic\/conceptual understanding (Differentiating Emotions<\/em> and Analyses of Emotions<\/em>). This distinction is critical: in younger children or individuals with neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities, emotional awareness may remain arrested at the somatic level, translating emotional tension directly into somatic complaints without psychological insight.<\/p>\n Extensive psychometric investigations have affirmed the multi-faceted validity of the EAQ across diverse international cohorts, including Dutch, British, Spanish, Italian, Persian, and American samples.<\/p>\n Confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) studies consistently corroborate the hypothesized six-factor hierarchical model over unidimensional or orthogonal alternatives. The multi-trait structure demonstrates configural and metric invariance across sex and across age brackets spanning middle childhood (ages 8\u201311) and early adolescence (ages 12\u201316), confirming that the latent constructs retain equivalent psychometric properties across developmental transitions.<\/p>\n The EAQ subscales exhibit robust convergent correlations with related psychometric batteries assessing alexithymia, emotional intelligence, and coping:<\/p>\n The EAQ demonstrates clear predictive utility in discerning clinical and non-clinical pediatric populations, especially regarding internalizing distress:<\/p>\n The internal consistency and temporal stability of the EAQ have been substantiated across multiple empirical studies:<\/p>\n In the seminal 30-item validation study across Dutch primary and secondary school pupils ($N = 687$<\/span>; Rieffe et al., 2008), the Cronbach’s alpha ($\u0007lpha$<\/span>) coefficients for the six subscales demonstrated acceptable-to-good reliability for short pediatric inventories:<\/p>\n International cross-cultural adaptations have yielded comparable internal consistencies. For example, Spanish validation studies (Lahaye et al., 2011) reported Cronbach\u2019s alpha coefficients ranging between $.68$<\/span> and $.81$<\/span>, while Italian cohorts (Mancini et al., 2013) demonstrated alpha values between $.65$<\/span> and $.78$<\/span>, confirming structural coherence across linguistic translations.<\/p>\n Temporal stability evaluations conducted across intervals ranging from 4 to 12 weeks indicate moderate-to-high intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Pearson correlation coefficients ($r$<\/span> ranging between $.62$<\/span> and $.81$<\/span>). Subscales tapping cognitive\/reflective traits (e.g., Analyses of Emotions<\/em>, Differentiating Emotions<\/em>) demonstrate higher longitudinal stability compared to communicative domains (e.g., Verbal Sharing of Emotions<\/em>), which fluctuate more readily according to proximal changes in peer climate and social context.<\/p>\n The structural evolution of the EAQ spans exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on early prototype versions to rigorous confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the standardized 30-item instrument (Rieffe et al., 2007, 2008).<\/p>\n Initial iterations investigated higher-order representations including factors designated as Acting Out Emotions, Analyses of Emotions, Bodily Awareness, and Others\u2019 Emotions. EFA with oblique (Promax\/Oblimin) rotations indicated that while children recognize distinct facets of their emotional lives, behavioral “acting out” loaded indistinctly or represented externalizing conduct rather than awareness per se. Consequently, items were systematically refined to establish six correlated first-order factors.<\/p>\n In Rieffe et al. (2008), CFA was performed using maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors (MLR) on the 30 retained items. The hypothesized six-factor structure yielded superior goodness-of-fit indices compared to alternative competing architectures (such as a single-factor general awareness model or a two-factor intrapersonal vs. interpersonal model):<\/p>\n Factor loadings ($lambda$<\/span>) for individual items onto their designated latent factors are consistently salient, with standardized factor loadings predominantly falling between $.45$<\/span> and $.78$<\/span>, confirming high parameter precision across the operationalized indicators.<\/p>\n Response Scale: Keywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Differentiating Emotions (7 items)<\/h3>\n
2. Verbal Sharing of Emotions (3 items)<\/h3>\n
3. Not Hiding Emotions (5 items)<\/h3>\n
4. Bodily Awareness of Emotions (5 items)<\/h3>\n
5. Attending to Others\u2019 Emotions (5 items)<\/h3>\n
6. Analyses of Emotions (5 items)<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Construct and Structural Validity<\/h3>\n
Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant and Predictive Validity<\/h3>\n
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Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Stability<\/h3>\n
Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Exploratory Factor Modeling (EAQ Early Version)<\/h3>\n
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (EAQ-30)<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
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References<\/h2>\n
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Items of the Scale<\/h2>\n