| China is a country with many religions. Due to the complexity of Christian history, most Chinese Christian study include the Protestantism and Catholicism, and fewer studies have specifically been done for Catholics, study on development of religious psychology for Chinese Catholic children is rare. Considering of the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, and the limitations of research methods for children’s religious development, this study focused on developmental features and influencing factors of individual religious psychology for3-12year-old Chinese Catholic children, using the way of experiment and interview research.Following the concept and structure established by Wang Jiaqi (2013), select God belief, transcend experience and institutional participation for experimental studies, and morality pursuit for interview research. Among them, God belief is the cognitive factors, transcend experience is the emotional factors, institutional participation is the behavioral factors and morality pursuit is the personalistic dynamic factors.Combined with the characteristics of3-12year-old children, the author used video, audio, pictures, etc. to create the right religion context for them, preparing experimental materials, developing the highest score, and assessing the score by expert scoring method. In experimental studies, the author used three factors mixing experiment design of n (task)×5(age:3-year-old group,5-year-old group,7-year-old group,9-year-old group,11-year-old group)×2(gender:male, female). Taking task as the within-subject variable, age and gender as the between-subject variables, children scores as the dependent variables. In interview research, the author explored personalistic dynamic factors of Catholic children by interviewing10children. The study found:1. In God belief, the main effects of task and age are found. Children’s perception of creation is significantly better than the cognition of God and the Virgin Mary. A significant difference in scores of God faith is found between5-year-old group and 7-year-old group, no significant difference is found between the other adjacent age group.2. In transcend experience, the interaction between task and age is significant. To5-year-old children, the emotion experiences of God’s suffering, Virgin Mary, hymns, Mass are significantly better than reading or listening to the Bible story, no significant difference is found between the other adjacent age group. Significant differences of the emotion experience of God’s sacred heart, God’s suffering, hymns and Mass are found between3-year-old and5-year-old groups, and5-year-old and7-year-old groups. Significant difference of the emotion experience of Virgin Mary, praying, and reading or listening to the Bible story are found between5-year-old and7-year-old groups. No significant difference is found between the other adjacent age group.3. In institutional participation, the interaction between task and age is significant. The participation frequency of praying, Mass or Sunday school, reading or listening to the Bible story are significantly higher than hymns and attending religious gatherings. Significant differences of the participation frequency of praying and Mass or Sunday school are found between3-year-old and5-year-old groups, no significant differences is found in other adjacent age groups of children in different tasks. Significant difference of the participation frequency of reading or listening to the Bible story between3-year-old and11-year-old groups, no significant differences in other age groups of children in different tasks.4. In morality pursuit of Catholic children, with the increasing age, there is a tendency from materiality to spirituality. However, as the limitation of children’s cognition, they can still not understand some abstract phenomena of nature very well.5. The religious psychological developmental of Catholic children is affected by family beliefs, the level of awareness, religious places, religious life and other factors. |
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