Deneault Joane, Ricard Marcelle
Université du Québec a Rimouski, Département des sciences de l'éducation, 300 allée des Ursulines, Rimouski, Québec G5L 3A1, Canada.
J Genet Psychol. 2013 Jan-Feb;174(1):88-116. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2011.642028.
According to empirical findings, emotional knowledge and false belief understanding seem to be differently linked to social adjustment. However, whereas false belief is assessed through the capacity to identify its behavioral consequences, emotion tasks usually rely on the comprehension of facial expressions and of the situational causes of emotions. The authors examined if the documented relationship between social adjustment and emotion knowledge in children extends to the understanding of behavioral consequences of emotions. Eighty French-speaking preschoolers undertook false belief and consequence-of-emotion tasks. Their social adjustment was measured by the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation. Children's language ability, their parent's level of education, and the familial socioeconomic score were taken into account. Results showed that children's social adjustment was significantly predicted by their knowledge of emotion, but not by their understanding of false belief. The findings confirm the special status of emotion among mental states for social adaptation and specify which dimensions of adaptation to peers and adults are predicted by the child's emotion understanding. They also suggest that the distinction between mind and emotion understanding may be conceptual rather than methodological.
根据实证研究结果，情绪知识和错误信念理解与社会适应的关联似乎有所不同。然而，错误信念是通过识别其行为后果的能力来评估的，而情绪任务通常依赖于对面部表情和情绪情境原因的理解。作者研究了儿童社会适应与情绪知识之间已被记录的关系是否延伸至对情绪行为后果的理解。八十名说法语的学龄前儿童参与了错误信念和情绪后果任务。他们的社会适应通过社会能力和行为评估来衡量。研究考虑了儿童的语言能力、其父母的教育水平以及家庭社会经济得分。结果表明，儿童的社会适应显著地由他们的情绪知识预测，而非由他们对错误信念的理解预测。这些发现证实了情绪在社会适应的心理状态中具有特殊地位，并明确了儿童的情绪理解预测了适应同龄人和成年人的哪些维度。它们还表明，心智理解与情绪理解之间的区别可能是概念性的而非方法性的。
