The Role of Theory of Mind, Emotion Knowledge and Empathy in Preschoolers’ Disruptive Behavior

Abstract

Objectives Research examining disruptive behaviors in clinical groups of preschool and school-aged children has consistently revealed significant difficulties in their emotion knowledge and empathy but intact performance in their theory-ofmind (ToM). However, it is largely not known if these difficulties in emotion knowledge and empathy as opposed to ToM are specific to extreme forms of disruption in clinical groups or rather represent broad deficiencies related to disruptive behaviors in general, including the milder levels exhibited by typically developing children. Milder disruptive behaviors (e.g., whining, arguing, rule-breaking and fighting) in peer contexts might relate to normative variations in socio-cognitive and emotional skills like ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy. To illuminate whether the same pattern of relations observed in clinical samples would arise in typical development, this study aims to examine the role of ToM, emotion knowledge and empathy in typically developing preschoolers' disruptive behaviors. Methods We used individual tasks to measure 116 typically developing Turkish preschoolers' ToM, emotion knowledge (understanding anger and sadness) and empathy for pain, and received mothers' reports about children's levels of disruptive behavior in peer contexts. Results Path analysis showed that among these skills, it was only empathy which predicted disruptive behaviors significantly (β = −0.25, p < 0.05). Understanding sadness predicted higher empathy (β = 0.18, p < 0.05) and higher empathy predicted lower disruptive behaviors, but the mediation of empathy in the link between understanding sadness and disruptive behavior was not significant (β = −0.05, p > 0.05, 90% CI = −0.106, 0.001). Conclusions Overall, our results indicate that empathizing with others' emotions is more important than understanding their mental states and emotions for lower disruptive behaviors.

The Role of Socioeconomic Adversity and Armed Conflict in Executive Function, Theory of Mind and Empathy in Children

“…Likewise, SES did not moderate the relation between armed conflict and empathy. While these results were not in line with our expectations, they are consistent with the findings showing that SES is not linked with individually assessed empathy [42,43]. The literature examining the relation between SES and empathy is limited and less conclusive, suggesting both positive and negative associations [41,42].…”

“…However, in Nefdt's [42] study, parentreported empathy was negatively correlated with SES in 7-to-10-year-olds, whereas individual task-based assessment of empathy was not associated with SES. Similarly, EF, ToM AND EMPATHY IN AN ARMED CONFLICT ZONE 6 Ekerim-Akbulut et al [43] reported that SES was not related to individual task-based assessment of empathy in preschool children.…”

“…All of the tasks utilized in the current study had previously been translated into Turkish and used in research conducted with Turkish preschool children, and they have been found to be reliable and valid measures for Turkish samples [17,43,64]. In the current study, all forms, scales, and tasks were translated from Turkish into Kurdish by a professional bilingual translator and then reviewed by three bilingual psychologists.…”

“…A computerized task [43,64] was used to measure child's level of empathy towards people experiencing everyday events that might have the potential to inflict pain (e.g., pinching a finger in a door). The task included 18 pictures, where children were instructed to look at the situation carefully and respond to two questions, "How much pain you think the person in the picture is experiencing?"…”

Preschoolers' Empathy Profiles and Their Social Adjustment

“…Conversely, weaker empathy is thought to entail a risk of inappropriate social behaviors, displayed through aggressivity and conflict, for example (Dahmen et al, 2004). Most studies have emphasized that empathy is negatively related to externalizing problems at an early age (Noten et al, 2020), preschool age (Strayer and Roberts, 2004;Ekerim-Akbulut et al, 2020), and school age (Deschamps et al, 2015(Deschamps et al, , 2018Malcolm-Smith et al, 2015), and in adolescence (LeSure-Lester, 2000;Lovett and Sheffield, 2007;Pouw et al, 2013). Feeling the same emotion as others discourages children from acting inappropriately, for example by hitting or mocking them (Hastings et al, 2000).…”