幼儿对基于信念的惊奇情绪的认知发展

Development of Preschoolers’ Emotion Cognition Concerning Belief-Based Surprise

采用简化的错误信念任务，考察了90名3~5岁幼儿对自己或他人信念证伪引发的惊奇情绪认知及其错误信念理解。结果显示，3~5岁幼儿对自身或是故事主人公信念证伪之后的惊奇情绪理解表现出显著的发展趋势，其归因均以情境定向为主，只有极少数幼儿提到了相应的信念状态。3、4、5幼儿对他人、以及自身错误信念的认知基本是一致的，通过率分别为一半左右、76.7%、93.3%。幼儿对惊奇情绪产生原因的逆向推理能力在3~5岁之间获得了显著的发展，这一能力显著差于其错误信念认知，且略低于其顺向预测能力。这些结果揭示出幼儿很早就发展的心理理论以及心理表征技能在惊奇情绪理解中的作用。

Typically， a false belief paradigm has been used to explore children’s understanding of the relationship between emotion and belief， which is part of the children’s naive theory of mind. Abundant results have indicated that children are able to understand belief-based emotions only after the age of 4 to 5. This study clarified the following two variables that perhaps influenced preschoolers’ belief and belief-based emotion cognition: (1) desire status of the story’s protagonist who is typically and inevitably involved in many belief tasks and (2) distinction between the beliefs of different protagonists. Using the belief-based emotion of surprise， the classic “content false belief” task was simplified to explore the possibility that younger preschoolers might show the rudimentary understanding of belief-based emotions. The role of mental representation in their understanding of belief-based surprise was then examined further using a backward emotion task.MethodThe participants comprised 90 children， aged 3， 4， and 5， who were randomly selected from one of Beijing’s regular kindergarten schools. The children were divided into 3 age groups depending on their ages: 3.5 ± 0.3， 4.5 ± 0.3， and 5.5 ± 0.3. Each group comprised 30 children of which 15 were male. Each child was tested individually with regard to his or her own surprise status or that of the protagonist and false belief， when corresponding belief was proved false by looking into a specific package by oneself.ResultsSignificant developmental trends were observed in the preschoolers’ understanding of the belief-based emotion of surprise; moreover， most of them justified their judgment with situational reasons and only a few referred to the corresponding belief state. The children’s understanding of their own false belief was basically consistent with that of the others， with the passing ration of half or so， 76.7%， and 93.3%. Further， their backward reasoning with regard to the causes of the belief-based emotion of surprise also showed significant development among the children; this was marginally worse than their surprise prediction and significantly worse than their understanding of false beliefs.ConclusionsThe abovementioned results indicated that preschoolers developed an understanding of belief-based emotions at an early age and suggested their early developed theory of mind and the role of mental representation in their understanding of surprise.