Preschool‐aged children's understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge

Developmental precursors to children's early understanding of gratitude were examined. A diverse group of 263 children was tested for emotion and mental state knowledge at ages 3 and 4, and their understanding of gratitude was measured at age 5. Children varied widely in their understanding of gratitude, but most understood some aspects of gratitude‐eliciting situations. A model‐building path analysis approach was used to examine longitudinal relations among early emotion and mental state knowledge and later understanding of gratitude. Children with a better early understanding of emotions and mental states understand more about gratitude. Mental state knowledge at age 4 mediated the relation between emotion knowledge at age 3 and gratitude understanding at age 5. The current study contributes to the scant literature on the early emergence of children's understanding of gratitude.     

The Directed Forgetting Effect in Word-fragment Completion: An Application of the Process Dissociation Procedure

In three experiments, subjects were asked to remember and forget study words. In line with previous studies, a directed forgetting effect was observed in a word-fragment completion task: Instructions to remember increased the completion of target fragments compared with instructions to forget (Experiment 1). Using the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991), it appeared that instructions to remember increased the estimates of intentional influences of memory but did not affect the estimates of automatic uses of memory (Experiments 1, 2 and 3). This suggests that directed forgetting effects in word-fragment completion reflect the surreptitious influence of explicit memory in a nominally implicit memory task. However, a meta-analysis indicated that directed forgetting instructions affected automatic and intentional influences of memory in opposite directions. This finding casts doubt on the assumption of independence between automatic and intentional uses of memory. The implications for use of the process dissociation procedure are discussed.     

Longitudinal associations between children's understanding of emotions and theory of mind

Theory of mind competence and knowledge of emotions were studied longitudinally in a sample of preschoolers aged 3 (n=263) and 4 (n=244) years. Children were assessed using standard measures of theory of mind and emotion knowledge. Three competing hypotheses were tested regarding the developmental associations between children's theory of mind abilities and their knowledge of emotions. First, that an understanding of emotion develops early and informs children's understanding of others’ thinking. Alternatively, having a basic theory of mind may help children learn about emotions. Third, that the two domains are separate aspects of children's social cognitive skills such that each area develops independently. Results of hierarchical regressions supported the first hypothesis that early emotion understanding predicts later theory-of-mind performance, and not the reverse.