Internal migrant preschoolers: life changes serve better emotion understanding?

This study investigates the impact of internal migration on emotion understanding in 6-7-year-old preschoolers, comparing children who relocated to Moscow within the past 3 years to their non-migrant peers. The study involved 182 neurotypical, native Russian-speaking children aged 6-7 from Moscow kindergartens, who were divided into a migrant (n = 71) and a non-migrant group (n = 111). Using the Russian adaptation of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), the research assessed three hierarchical levels of emotion understanding: external, mental, and reflective. Results showed that internal migrant children demonstrated significantly higher reflective emotion understanding, while no differences were found in external or mental levels. These findings suggest that migration-related challenges may foster the development of higher-order emotional competencies through exposure to diverse emotional experiences. The study interprets these results through Vygotsky's concept of the social situation of development and Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory. Despite its stressors, internal migration appears to serve as a developmental resource for enhancing emotion understanding in young children.