Faculty of Education, Chiba University, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Nov;187:104659. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.06.012. Epub 2019 Aug 2.
Three experiments examined the influence of other people's negative emotions on young children's counterfactual thinking. Experiment 1 (N = 48) explored whether 4- to 6-year-olds could think counterfactually about both physical and emotional events using the discriminating counterfactual tasks that children could not respond correctly without thinking counterfactually. Experiment 1 showed that 4- to 6-year-olds could think of counterfactuals associated with emotional events. Experiment 2 (N = 97) and Experiment 3 (N = 48) examined whether a protagonist's emotional state (emotional expression condition) affected 4- to 6-year-olds' ability to think counterfactually about physical events. It was shown that emotional expression conditions enhanced young children's counterfactual thinking about physical events. These findings suggest that 5- and 6-year-olds can think counterfactually and that emotional components trigger such thinking.
三个实验考察了他人的负面情绪对幼儿反事实思维的影响。实验 1（N=48）使用辨别反事实任务来探索 4 至 6 岁儿童是否可以对物理事件和情绪事件进行反事实思考，而儿童如果不进行反事实思考就无法正确回答这些任务。实验 1 表明，4 至 6 岁儿童可以想到与情绪事件相关的反事实。实验 2（N=97）和实验 3（N=48）考察了主角的情绪状态（情绪表达条件）是否会影响 4 至 6 岁儿童对物理事件进行反事实思考的能力。结果表明，情绪表达条件增强了幼儿对物理事件的反事实思维。这些发现表明，5 岁和 6 岁的儿童可以进行反事实思考，并且情绪成分会触发这种思考。
