学前儿童朴素情绪理论的发展

对情绪的心理层面的理解是幼儿心理理论发展中出现得相对较迟的能力, 他们如何通过愿望和信念等不同的心理状态对人们的情绪做出判断？随着年龄的增长, 他们采用不同策略推测情绪的能力又发生了什么变化？本研究结合主人公愿望是否得到满足的状态, 通过利用图片故事个别测查的方法探查了90名3~5岁学前儿童在“内容错误信念”任务中对他人情绪的推测。结果显示, 年幼儿童、尤其是3岁幼儿的高兴情绪理解受其对情境是否满足愿望的认知的影响, 呈现出显著的“积极情绪偏差效应”; 学前儿童对情绪的认知表现出从不能采用信念—愿望策略到错误地采用信念—愿望策略、到正确采用信念—愿望策略的发展模式, 且其基于信念的情绪理解在一定程度上呈现出落后于其错误信念理解的“滞后效应”。结果还显示幼儿的惊奇情绪判断不仅由信念成分决定, 也受愿望理解的影响。这些结果突显出心理状态在儿童情绪理解中的重要作用, 揭示出学前儿童相对完整的朴素情绪理论发展模式。

Developmental Pattern of Preschoolers' Naive Theory of Emotion

Understanding the mentalistic aspects of emotion is relatively late developed ability in preschoolers’ theory of mind. How do they infer peoples’ emotion according to their mental status, such as desire and belief? How do their inferring strategies change as they grow? Vinden (1999), de Rosnay et al. (2004) claimed that preschoolers strategies of emotion cognition changed from situation-desire to belief-desire; however, considering the func-tionalism theory of emotion, we proposed children’s understanding of emotion were associated necessarily with their understanding of both desire and belief, and questioned their idea of situation-desire strategy. To examine this proposal, we combined individual’s different desire status (gratified or not) with their belief in the classical “content false belief” tasks to explore preschoolers’ induction of emotion. Ninety preschoolers aged 3 to 5 from one common kindergarten in Beijing were recruited and divided into three gender-matched groups: 3-year-olds, Mean age = 3.51; 4-year-olds, Mean age = 4.50; 5-year-olds, Mean age = 5.47. The experiment was conducted individually in which each child was asked to make emotion infer-ences after listening to illustrated stories. The results demonstrated that preschoolers’, especially 3-year-olds’, understanding of happiness emotion was markedly influenced by their knowledge of whether protagonists’ desire could be gratified by current situa-tion or not, known as the “positive emotion effect”. Preschoolers’ emotion cognition evolved from no use of belief-desire strategy to false use of belief-desire strategy, and finally to correct use of belief-desire strategy. Their understanding of belief-based emotion significantly lagged behind the understanding of false beliefs. Moreover, preschoolers’ judgment of surprises was determined by their understanding of belief and desire as well. This study highlighted the pivotal role of mental status in children’s understanding of emotions. More im-portantly, current findings provided an overarching developmental schema of preschoolers’ naive theory of emotion.