Young children's understanding of pretend crying: The effect of context

Abstract

Reasoning about another's pretend and real crying is related to ma'ny important social cognitive abilities (e.g., emotional understanding, appearance-reality, and theory of mind). This study investigated whether children aged 6 years and younger could distinguish between instances of pretend crying and real crying as presented in stories. Sixty-five Japanese children aged 4-6 years were given stories within two contexts (Play and Non-play). In the Play context, the protagonist of the story was pretending to cry or really crying during a pretend play activity. In the Non-play context, the protagonist was also pretending to cry or really crying after his/her toy had been hidden by another child. The children answered questions about these crying events. The results showed that the 4- and 5-year-olds showed significantly better understanding of pretend crying in the Play context compared to the Non-play context. In the Non-play context, they were significantly less likely to understand the cause of pretend crying compared to the 6-year-olds. The results suggest that the context of pretend play facilitates the children's understanding of pretend crying.

Young children discriminate genuine from fake smiles and expect people displaying genuine smiles to be more prosocial

“…Furthermore, they are sensitive to subtle differences in other social cues (Brey & Shutts, 2015;Over & Carpenter, 2015), and are able to differentiate real from pretend emotions (Gross & Harris, 1988;Harris et al, 1986;Misailidi, 2006;Mizokawa, 2011). Furthermore, around this age, children are developing an understanding of the psychological states underlying others" behavior -their "theory of mind" (e.g., Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001).…”

Theory of Mind and Sensitivity to Teacher and Peer Criticism Among Japanese Children

“…The results of the chi‐square analysis comparing the three theory of mind groups in the present study indicate that the children who understood first‐order false beliefs inferred a positive meaning from teacher criticism. Because 6‐year‐olds are able to discriminate between apparent emotion and real emotion (Banerjee & Yuill, ; Harris, Donnelly, Guz, & Pitt‐Watson, ; Mizokawa, ), they may detect the hidden positive message in teacher criticism by ‘reading’ the teacher's mind in the teacher condition. In other words, the real meaning of a critical message was not congruent with its ostensible meaning.…”

Identifying Emotional Expressions: Children’s Reasoning About Pretend Emotions of Sadness and Anger

“…Regarding research on emotional expression in contexts of play, the study by Mizokawa (2011), where children were presented with picture stories in a play context and in a nonplay context, showed that 4-and 5-year-old were better at distinguishing pretend crying from real crying in a pretend play context than in a non-play context. So Mizokawa (2011) suggested that the context of pretend play facilitates children's understanding of pretend crying.…”

“…Regarding research on emotional expression in contexts of play, the study by Mizokawa (2011), where children were presented with picture stories in a play context and in a nonplay context, showed that 4-and 5-year-old were better at distinguishing pretend crying from real crying in a pretend play context than in a non-play context. So Mizokawa (2011) suggested that the context of pretend play facilitates children's understanding of pretend crying. Furthermore, the study by Sidera et al (2013) showed that at the age of 4, despite not mastering the distinction between internal and external emotion, most children understand the playful intentionality of emotions expressed in pretend play contexts.…”