Development Of Counterfactuals In Children

With the increasing attention to the healthy development of children in China,it is particularly necessary to understand the emotional development of children.As a common social emotion,regret and gratitude can help individuals understand their past experiences,avoid mistakes in decision-making,and maintain physical and mental health.Childhood is a critical period for the development of regret and happiness.To understand the characteristics of the development of regret and happiness in children is of practical significance for the regulation of individual emotions and the development of mental health.Given the different research paradigms and measures used in existing studies,which have produced inconsistent results,there is still controversy over when children experience regret and happiness.Therefore,this study intends to use different research methods to explore the developmental characteristics of children’s counterfactual emotions from different aspects.This study is divided into three parts.In the first study,we used two types of picture-book situational story methods(one-dimensional picture book: a picture book can only cause a counterfactual emotion;The ability of 146 children aged 5 to 9 to experience counterfactual emotions was preliminarily investigated.The results:1.No matter whether the situational story material is a one-dimensional picture book or a two-dimensional picture book,most children can experience the feeling of regret when they are 5years old,but only when they are 8 years old can they experience the feeling of happiness.2.The development of children’s counterfactual emotions develops with the growth of age,no matter the regret experience emotions or the gratitude emotions,and the regret experience emotions appear earlier than the gratitude emotions.In study 2,simple decision games were used to verify the results of study 1,and different types of regret emotions were explored in a more detailed way,so as to discover the developmental characteristics of regret experience and expectation.The results:1.Children’s regret experience emotions appear at the age of 5,but their development is not stable at the age of 5 to 6.Only children at the age of 7 can experience regret emotions,children at the age of 8 can experience happiness emotions,and children at the age of 9 can experience regret anticipation emotions.2.Consistent with the results of the study,the development of children’s counterfactual emotions develops with the growth of age,regardless of the regret experience emotions or the gratitude emotions,and the regret experience emotions appear earlier than the gratitude emotions,and the regret expectation emotions appear later.Most studies explore the development of children’s counterfactual emotions from the perspective of children themselves,by comparing the options and the options,but in daily life,individuals are always influenced by information about others.Therefore,study 3 used social comparison situations to compare the differences in the development of regret and happiness in children under different situations.The results:1.In the social context,children aged 6 can experience feelings of regret,and children aged 7can experience not only feelings of gratitude but also feelings of anticipation of regret.2.In the social context,the age of both regret and happiness emotions was significantly earlier,and the score of emotional intensity in the social context was significantly stronger than that in the self-context.We also found,to our surprise,that under counterfactual emotions,children can show helpful behavior.Based on the above three studies,we draw the following conclusions:(1)children at the age of 7 can experience regret,children at the age of 8 can experience happiness,and children at the age of 9 can experience the anticipation of regret.(2)social context can promote the development of children’s counterfactual emotions.(3)children experience regret emotions earlier than happiness emotions,and regret expected emotions appear later.(4)the development of children’s counterfactual emotions develops with the growth of age,and there is no significant difference between genders in the development of children’s counterfactual emotions.(5)we were surprised to find that under the counter factual emotion,children can show helpful behavior.