The Development Of Children's Psychological Theory Of Moral Judgment

The development of Children's theory of mind has been a research focus during the past two decades. Inconsistency exists among scholars about the progressing of children's theory of mind after false belief understanding. But researchers have achieved consistency that children's theory of mind actually develops after false belief understanding. Children in their early stage of school years have not only realized that individual could produce different beliefs when facing different information but also realized that individual could have different beliefs because of different constructs and different explaining when facing the information, So interpretive theory of mind followed as a consequence. Compared with the younger children, elder children begin to predict and explain the behavior and emotion of the individual according to trait, So the trait-understanding in theory of mind followed as a consequence. This research try to probe into the development of the two models in the early stage of children's school years as well as the existence of cultural difference between them and the relationship between children's theory of mind and their moral judgments.Two experiments were designed. The first one inspected the development of interpretive theory of mind and trait-understanding in theory of mind in children of 5-7 years old. Researchers interviewed children using clinical interview method with stories and pictures. The second experiment probed into the relationship between children's moral judgments and their theory of mind both at the low-grade stage and advanced stage. Results are followed as such:1. False belief understanding was different from interpretive theory of mind;the former appeared earlier and was a necessary but insufficient condition to the latter.2. The interpretive theory of mind appeared earlier in children of ourcountry compared with children of abroad. The key time of acquiring interpretive theory of mind was after 7 years old.3. We found cultural difference in interpretive theory of mind which confirmed the former hypothesis.4. As a whole, the key age of children's trait-understanding is about 7 years old. In detail, children's predicting ability toward behavior and emotion didn't differentiate among different age groups, children in our country could predict behavior and emotion according to people's traits from 5 years old;children's attribution of behavior were performed better than attribution of emotion.5. Children in our country could make sound evaluation according to their intention at the age of 4. The age of 3-4 was an accelerating developmental period, which slowed down after 4. The age of 5-6 was another period of celerity, and after that the speed dropped.6. Children in our country could make punishment to individuals according to their intention after 4, such ability of boys developed fast after 4 and slowed down after 6. Girls developed fast during 3-4 and slowed down after 4;accelerated again during 5-6 and. calm down after 6.7. False belief understanding correlated significantly with moral judgments even if the age factor was controlled;there wasn't significant correlation among interpretive theory of mind, traits-understanding and moral judgments.