BONEKA PERASAAN (BOPER): FACILITATING EMOTION COMPREHENSION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

Abstract

A unique doll, named BonekaPerasaan (Boper), which had a number of emotional symbols, was designated to be displayed in some storytelling sessions. The use of Boper in storytelling was specifically aimed to introduce several basic emotions for children in early childhood and further facilitate their emotion comprehension. The study involved 65 kindergarten students aged 5-6 years old and used quasi-experimental design, one group pretest-posttest. A modified TEC (Test of Emotion Comprehension) of Pons, Harris, and de Rosnay (2004), which measure nine components (i.e., recognition, external cause, desire, belief, reminder, regulation, hiding, mixed, and morality),then was used to identify children’s emotion comprehension. By using paired sample t-test, it was found that there was significant enhancement in children’s emotion comprehension after being served 5 times storytelling session (p>0.001). The further analysis also indicated that there was a significant enhancement in several components, namely recognition (p<0.001), external cause (p<0.001) and reminder (p<0.049).