Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Introduction
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.

Method
The 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 the protagonist’s, his or her own surprise status, and false belief, when corresponding belief was proved false by looking into a specific package by oneself.

Results
Significant 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.

Conclusions
The 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.

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