We present results for kaon decay widths of baryon resonances from a relativistic study with constituent quark models. The calculations are done in the point-form of Poincare-invariant quantum mechanics with a spectator-model decay operator. We obtai
n covariant predictions of the Goldstone-boson-exchange and a variant of the one-gluon-exchange constituent quark models for all kaon decay widths of established baryon resonances. They are generally characterized by underestimating the available experimental data. In particular, the widths of kaon decays with increasing strangeness in the baryon turn out to be extremely small. We also consider the nonrelativistic limit, leading to the familiar elementary emission model, and demonstrate the importance of relativistic effects. It is found that the nonrelativistic approach evidently misses sensible influences from Lorentz boosts and some essential spin-coupling terms.
