The ability to understand emotions, which has been gained since early childhood, is of great importance at the point of gaining emotional competence. We can consolidate emotional competence of children by defining their emotional competence and making regulations in need from early times. In this direction, a valid and reliable measurement tool is needed to measure the ability in understanding emotions of preschool children including Syrian refugee children. The aim of this study is to conduct the validity and reliability study of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), developed by Pons and Harris (2000), in Turkey. The sample of the study consist of 388 children 263 of whom are Turkish and 125 are Syrian refuge children who are selected from 60-72 months old children studying in kindergartens affiliated to the ministry of national education in Mersin province Akdeniz,Toros,Mezitli and Yenişehir central districts. First, the scale was translated from English to Turkish by three different linguists. Then, it was translated back into English by three other language experts and the consistency between the texts was checked. In addition, the comprehensibility of the items was tested by making a pilot application. The tasks expected from children in the scale were evaluated by pre-school education and measurement field experts. In order to determine the construct validity within the scope of the research, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed. As a result of the analyzes, it was determined that the scale exhibited a two-dimensional structure consisting of seven components with 23 items, and it was seen that acceptable fit indices were obtained (χ2/sd=1.84; RMSEA=0.046; CFI= 0.94; TLI=0.90; SRMR=0,10). When factor loading values are examined, ıt was seen that the values for the external dimension are between 0.49 and 0.95; For the Mental and Reflective dimensions, it was found to be between 0.21 and 0.82. In order to obtain information about the reliability of the test, the Mcdonald omega coefficient was examined, 0.81 for the first sub-dimension; 0.56 for the second sub-dimension and 0.81 for the whole scale. These results show that the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) is a valid and reliable tool for assessing children’s ability to understand emotions in Turkey.

Preschool Period, emotion comprehension, validity, reliability.