A Study On The Conscience Structure Of3～5Years Old Children

Conscience is one of the central concept of morality.It is the most important symbol of the socialization of the young children. Conscience, as the concentrated reflection of children moral quality, is the integration of moral emotion, moral conduct with moral cognition. Conscience of young children is a regulatory mechanism, which directs the conduct, generates affective experience, observes social norms, curbs selfishness and impulses, in the process of transformation of the externally regulating system into the internal system of internalization of children’s behavior. Conscience of young children includes the internal rules and cognate of the object, accompanies proactive affective experience and shows the cognition and affection through moral behavior.Conscience is a complicated concept. Psychologists define the concept from different angles. Psychological Analysis Theory, Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory discuss it from the point of self. And the research of conscience ends in the discussion of theoretical level. Not until the1920s when the conscience structure was combined, researchers fell to considering conscience from affection, cognition and behavior synthetically. However, researches were controversial, lacking of adequate survey and empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the conscience structure of the children from3to5years old through the investigation systematically. It can also measure the structure and the development of children’s conscience. At the same time, the conscience structure could be further confirmed and the research of related factors could be discussed in theory. In practice, the research could promote the development of moral education, formulate rational educational measures of conscience and the Psychological development scale in order to direct the educational Behavior of educators and parents and evaluate the developmental level of children’s conscience.This study adopted questionnaire survey method, choosing the children from3to5years old as the object of study. The children who are third taken at random from Taian, Qingdao and Dalian are900,400and900respectively. Collecting valid questionnaires are790,336and759respectively, which are used in revising conscience questionnaire. In this questionnaire which was based on the classical study in foreign, we revised the measure of conscience from3to5years old children that suitable for Chinese cultural background, in older to explore and research the structure of the conscience in item analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.We concluded some conclusions on the base of the comprehensive analysis and discussion on the research. They are as follows:1. The conscience questionnaire for3-5years old children we developed has a good reliability and validity. It can be used for assessing children’s conscience with3-5years old.2.The structure of3-5years old children’s conscience consists of guilt, empathy, apology and confession, concerning about parents, reparation, sensitivity, self-regulation. Guilt, empathy and concerning about parents are Moral sentiments; apology and confession and sensitivity are moral cognition; reparation and self-regulation are moral behavior.