Conflicting emotions: The connection between affective perspective taking and theory of mind

Abstract

The relation between theory of mind and affective perspective taking was examined in a study with 42 three-to five-year-olds. Children completed tasks measuring affective perspective taking, theory of mind, and receptive language abilities. Significant positive correlations existed between overall affective perspective taking and theory of mind performance, independent of age and language. The relation between theory of mind and affective perspective taking was strongest for those scenarios in which there was a conflict between the child and the friend's emotional responses. These findings indicate that the abilities to understand conflicting emotions and to understand false beliefs are related aspects of social development.

Emotion understanding in preschool children

“…Our result is partially consistent with that of O'Brien et al (2011), who did not find an association between unequivocal emotional reactions and ToM, though they did find an association between emotion labelling and stories evoking equivocal emotional reactions. In addition, Harwood and Farrar (2006) found a correlation between ToM and emotion understanding but highlighted that a higher correlation emerged when children were asked to predict another person's emotion when it differed from their own, rather than when it was congruent with their emotional state. Faced with our and others' results, we argue that ToM understanding may not overlap or be fundamental for the development of certain aspects of emotion understanding (cf.…”

Perspective training to treat anger problems after brain injury: Two case studies

“…Theory of mind, which relies heavily on perspective taking skills, is the ability to accurately infer others' mental states, including intentions (Harwood & Farrar, 2006;Jeon et al, 2013). Some studies have found that people with poor ToM are more likely to have negative attribution bias (Jeon et al, 2013;Penn, Roberts, Combs, & Sterne, 2007).…”

A compreensão da gratidão e teoria da mente em crianças de 5 anos

“…Existem ainda poucos estudos sobre a gratidão na infância, embora resultados de pesquisa indiquem que as crianças são capazes de vivenciar (Gordon et al, 2004), expressar (Baumgarten-Tramer, 1938 e compreender a gratidão (Freitas et al, 2009a(Freitas et al, , 2009bGraham, 1988;Graham & Barker, 1990;Harris et al, 1987;Castro et al, 2011;Russell & Paris, 1994). Alguns autores (e.g., de Rosnay et al, 2004;Harwood & Farrar, 2006;Heerey et al, 2003;Racine et al, 2007) investigaram as relações entre uma teoria da mente e a compreensão de emoções e sentimentos, mas nenhum havia abordado especificamente a gratidão.…”