心理科学 ›› 2011, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (3): 581-587.

• 发展与教育 • 上一篇    下一篇

心理弹性儿童的心理理论

桑标1,席居哲2,3,左志宏4,Wu Wei3   

  1. 1. 华东师范大学
    2. 华东师范大学心理与认知科学学院
    3. University of Kansas
    4. 华东师范大学学前教育与特殊教育学院
  • 收稿日期:2011-04-15 出版日期:2011-05-20 发布日期:2011-06-19
  • 通讯作者: 席居哲

Theory of Mind in Resilient Children

  • Received:2011-04-15 Online:2011-05-20 Published:2011-06-19
  • Contact: Ju-Zhe XI

摘要: 本研究探讨了心理弹性儿童与缺乏心理弹性儿童心理理论的差异及其心理弹性发展意蕴。对523名从小学三年级至初中二年级中小学生利用多信源汇聚操作甄别法,通过逆境/压力综合评定与心理社会发展功能综合评定,甄别出心理弹性儿童99人和缺乏心理弹性儿童176人。对全部被试施测12类心理理论任务。在控制了阅读能力、性别和年龄所进行的多元协方差分析(MANCOVA)结果发现:心理弹性儿童在心理理论得分总体上显著高于缺乏心理弹性儿童;对12类任务分别进行协方差分析(ANCOVA)表明,两组儿童心理理论得分显著性差异主要体现在诸如假装、讽刺、说服、双重欺骗、误解等5类任务上,白谎任务上组间差异临界显著,其余任务组间差异未达统计学意义显著性水平。以年龄和性别为控制变量所进行的偏相关分析结果提示,心理理论与心理社会发展功能之间存在显著的正向关联。最后较详细讨论了心理理论对心理弹性发展的意义。

Abstract: Resilience has gained enormous attention by scholars from both theoretical and practical perspectives for several decades. However, a lack of research on specific levels of protective factors, such as individual competence in ascertaining and judging other people’s psychological states, has rendered this field unsubstantiated except for some general rules. Therefore, this comparative study focuses on the differences in Theory of Mind between resilient children and non-resilient ones, and their implications for resilient development. Method: Employing multi-information convergence method, the authors screened out 99 resilient children and 176 nonresilient ones from 523 local primary and middle school students ranging from grade 3 to 8 in Henan Province who score relatively high on index of proximal adversity/pressure. A set of Theory of Mind (ToM) test was administrated to all subjects. This test included 12 strange stories that covered topics from pretending, joking, lying, white lies, metaphors and irony to persuasion, double bluff, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, jealousy, and contrary emotions. There was a control story (story on physics) between every two psychological stories. For every psychological story, children were asked an understanding question (score 1 if correct, 0 if incorrect), and a psychological inference question (score range from 0~3, higher score for children who explained the story in more details). Results: Taking reading ability, gender and age as covariates, results from MANCOVA revealed that resilient children got higher ToM scores in general than their nonresilient counterparts. ANCOVA showed that there are of significant differences in five ToM tasks such as pretending, irony, persuading, double bluff and misunderstanding, there is a critically significant difference in the task of white lie, while no significant differences in other ToM tasks are found between the two groups. When the effects of age and gender fixed, partial correlation indicated the noteworthy positive relationship between ToM and psychosocial development. Discussion: On the one hand, as actively requesting for social support and protective environment is crucial for children under pressure from adversity, those who have better interpersonal relationship will gain more psychological resilient ability than those who don’t have. On the other hand, there exists positive correlation between theory of mind and interpersonal relationship in children. Thus, the authors suggested that the better interpersonal relationship (and hence more opportunities for acquiring social support) played a major role in the relationship between theory of mind and psychological resilience. Implications for the correlation between ToM and psychological social development (i.e., children’s popularity rated by teachers and peers) are also discussed in detail. Conclusions: Psychological resilient children scored higher on twelve ToM tasks than nonresilient children; and there existed positive relationship between ToM competence and psychological social development, especially for the social competence that were rated by peers rather than teachers.