- Project Title
- EMOCEAN – Diary of Emotions
- Duration
- 11/2025 – 06/2026
- Project members
-
Prof. Dr. Frank Niklas
Tina Schiele
María Valcárcel Jimnénez
Öykü Camligüney
Oliver Specht
- Socio-emotional competencies are a key prerequisite for successfully coping with social demands during childhood. They enable children to navigate new situations, build social relationships, resolve conflicts, and appropriately perceive and express their own emotions. The learning environment at home plays a crucial role in this process, as shared conversations, joint experiences, and emotional support from caregivers can sustainably foster the development of these competencies. In this context, digital media offers a promising opportunity to support children’s learning processes in a playful way while also building on children’s existing interests.
- With this in mind, an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, educators, and computer scientists developed a digital diary app designed to encourage parents and children to reflect jointly on experiences that occurred during the day. Through regular engagement with experienced emotions, children are supported in their socio-emotional development, while parents gain valuable insights into their child’s emotional world.
- The present study investigates the effectiveness of the newly established diary app. Participating families are provided with tablets containing the app for free use over the course of one month. Families are randomly assigned to one of two groups: an intervention group receives the tablet immediately after the first home visit, while a waitlist group receives the tablet at a later point in time. In total, three home visits take place, during which parent questionnaires and playful data assessments with the child are conducted. This study design aims to systematically assess the influence of diary-app use on children’s socio-emotional development.
- The aim of this research project is to investigate the extent to which the use of the Emocean app contributes to the promotion of children’s socio-emotional competencies. In particular, the study examines whether the app has a positive impact on the quality of the learning environment at a child´s home and whether it supports the development of children’s emotional knowledge. It is expected that the intervention will improve both socio-emotional skills and the understanding of one’s own and others’ emotions, while simultaneously strengthening supportive processes within the home learning environment.