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Psychological understanding in 6–12 year old children
Author(s) -
WAERN YVONNE
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1977.tb00251.x
Subject(s) - psychology , perspective (graphical) , task (project management) , cognition , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , perspective taking , social psychology , empathy , management , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics
.— Psychological understanding in 150 children, 6, 8, and 12 years old, was studied by the following tasks: (1) Single affective perspective‐taking, where the child had to name the emotion evoked in the main person by a described situation; (2) Double affective perspective‐taking, where the child had to name the emotion ascrib‐able to another person interacting with the main person, i.e. shift perspectives; (3) The child had to explain another person's behavior without any cues whatsoever; (4) The child had to explain another person's behavior and cues were provided. With very few exceptions, occurring mostly in the youngest group, the children answered with appropriate emotions in both the single and the double affective perspective‐taking tasks. Explanations obtained in the task without cues were categorized according to criteria derived from Piaget's descriptions of cognitive development. The developmental differences found correspond well to differences in children's conceptions of the physical world. In the task with cues, the older children were found to take more cues into account and to be able to combine these more adequately than the younger.