.3-6 Year-old Children Emotional Understanding And Theory Of Mind Development Characteristics,

Infant phase is a rapidly developmental period for children's emotion understanding and theory of mind. Recently, the relationship between emotion understanding and theory of mind is becoming an important hot topic of the developmental psychology. Based on previous researches, the purpose of this study is verifying the age characteristic, the sex difference and the relationship of the 3-6 years old children's ability of emotion understanding and theory of mind.One hundred and thirty children aged form 3 to 6 years old were assessed on their ability of emotion understanding and theory of mind. Matsumoto and Ekman's Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE), situation stories and typical research method of theory of mind were used as the experimental materials in the study. We systematically and comprehensively discussed the developmental characteristic and relationship between the ability of emotion understanding and theory of mind. The results showed that:(1) Children recognized happy very better than other emotions, almost all children after 3 years can accurately recognize facial expression of happy. Secondly was anger, over half of children aged 3 and 4 years could accurately recognize facial expression of anger. Thirdly was sadness, scores of recognition facial expression of sadness of children aged 5 years exceeded scores of anger recognition. Recognition facial expression of fear, surprise, and disgust showed same developmental trend which increased rapidly in 5 years old. Children's recognition of facial expression increased with age in a systematic order: Happy, anger, and sadness emerged early and were more accessible. Fear, surprise, and disgust emerged later and were less accessible.(2) All children aged 3 years couldn't label all six specific emotions facial photographs. All children aged 3 to 6 years couldn't label disgust facial photographs. Half of children aged 4 years could accurately label facial expression of happy, anger, and sadness. Scores of children aged 5 years on labeling facial expression of happy, sadness, anger and fear increased rapidly than children aged 4 years. Scores of labeling facial expression of happy, angry and sadness were higher than fear and surprise.(3) Scores of labeling emotional situations of happy, sadness and fear were higher than anger and surprise which were also higher than disgust. Children aged 3 years old labeled happy situations very better than other emotions, almost all children aged 4 years old could accurately label emotional situations of happy. The developmental trends of labeling emotional situations of sadness and fear which reached to a plateau for children aged 6 years old were similar almost. Children aged 3 years old couldn't label emotional situations of angry, surprise and disgust correctly, which improved significantly at the age of 5 years. There were gender differences during children's labeling emotional situations. Girls performed better than boys.(4) Scores on the recognition of facial expression task were significantly higher than scores on the labeling of emotional situations task which were significantly higher than scores on the labeling of facial expression tasks for children aged 3 to 6 years. The developmental trend of recognition of facial expression was the same as labeling of facial expression task. The period of 3 to 5 years old was a rapidly developmental one for children's recognition and labeling of facial expression which became a steady level when children became 5 years old. Labeling of emotional situations was persistently developing during infancy.(5) Scores of theory of mind for children aged 3 years old were significantly lower than children aged 5 and 6 years old. Scores of theory of mind for children aged 4 years old were significantly lower than children aged 6 years old. The developmental characteristic of theory of mind also presented that the developmental level of different theory of mind tasks were steady and consistent.(6)The correlation of emotion understanding and theory of mind was significant (r=0.37) . Age trends were found for both tasks: scores in emotion understanding and theory of mind increased with age for preschoolers. Children aged 3 years old performed better in theory of mind than emotion understanding. The scores of emotion understanding for children aged 5 and 6 years old were higher than of theory of mind. Gender differences in emotion understanding and theory of mind were all significant. In these two tasks, girls' performances were better than boys'.