School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT9 5BN, UK; School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AD, UK.
School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT9 5BN, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2024 Oct;246:106016. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106016. Epub 2024 Jul 22.
People's emotional states are influenced not just by events occurring in the present but also by how events have unfolded in the past and how they are likely to unfold in the future. To what extent do young children understand the ways in which past events can affect current emotions even if they are no longer ongoing? In the current study, we explored children's ability to understand how others feel at the cessation of events-as events change from being present to being past. We asked 97 4- to 6-year-olds (40.2% female) and 35 adults (54.3% female) to judge how characters felt once particular types of events had ended relative to how they felt during these events. We found that from age 4, children judged (as adults do) that the character would feel positive at the cessation of negative events-what we refer to as temporal relief. This understanding of relief occurs earlier than has been shown in previous research. However, children were less likely than adults to judge others as feeling sad at the cessation of positive events-what we refer to as temporal disappointment. Overall, our findings suggest that children not only understand that the cessation of events can affect others' emotions but also recognize that people feel differently following the cessation of positive, negative, and neutral events.
人们的情绪状态不仅受到当前发生的事件的影响，还受到过去事件的展开方式以及未来事件可能的展开方式的影响。即使过去的事件不再发生，幼儿在多大程度上能理解过去事件如何影响当前情绪？在目前的研究中，我们探讨了儿童理解他人在事件结束时感受的能力——事件从当前状态转变为过去状态。我们询问了 97 名 4 至 6 岁的儿童（40.2%为女性）和 35 名成年人（54.3%为女性），让他们判断特定类型的事件结束后角色的感受与事件进行时的感受相比如何。我们发现，从 4 岁开始，儿童就像成年人一样判断（认为）消极事件结束时角色会感到积极——我们称之为时间缓解。这种对缓解的理解比之前研究中显示的要早。然而，与成年人相比，儿童不太可能判断他人在积极事件结束时感到悲伤——我们称之为时间失望。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，儿童不仅理解事件的结束会影响他人的情绪，还认识到人们在积极、消极和中性事件结束后会有不同的感受。
