28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

Outward Bound.
2063.15 Relations between children’s implicit personality theories and responses to social failure,
Liping Zhang, Meifang Wang, Lihui Sui, Shandong Normal University, China
Present study examined the relations between children’s implicit personality theories and
responses to social failure with 160 participants aged 4-12 in Jinan City, China. The results
indicated: (1) Older children coped with social failure more positively than youngers, trying more
entry strategies, experiencing more positive feelings and anticipating future social outcomes more
optimistically. (2) Compared with entity theorists, incremental theorists used more rejoining
strategies, which were more constructive as well. (3) After social failure, incremental theorists
showed more positive self-evaluation and future expectancy than entity theorists, while no
significant differences existed in their attributions to social failure.
2063.16 The development of children’s trait inferences in different informational conditions,
Zhenhua Dong, Meifang Wang, Jinxia Zhao, Shandong Normal University, China
Present study investigated the development of 5-, 7- and 9-year-old children’s trait inferences and
the basis of inferences in the conditions of trait category, trait property and trait category/property
information. The results indicated: For 5- and 7-year-old children, no significant differences
existed in their trait inferences in 3 informational conditions, while 9-year-old children’s inference
scores were higher in category conditions than property conditions. In category and property
conditions, most participates inferred new properties from the provided information. In
category/property conditions, 5- and 7-year-old children inferred from either category or property
information, while 9-year-old children mainly from category information.
2063.17 Do children have limits on theory of mind use? Bing Shi, Su Yanjie, Peking University,
China
This study examined children’s performance on two types of false belief tasks: behavior-related
and mental state related tasks. Children’s performance on these tasks were highly correlated.
Except 6-year-olds, 3, 4, 5-year-olds showed no significant difference between these tasks. Results
indicate: 1) the reason that younger children may not fully understand mental terms can not
explain their failing; 2) as Keysar (2003) demonstrates that adults have limits on theory of mind
use, children as early as 6 begin to dissociate “using tools” from “possessing tools” and show this
kind of limits. Several reasons for this dissociation are discussed.
2063.18 Could the eyes alone be emotional cues to children? Shuliang Mo, Su Yanjie, Peking
University, China
Previous studies indicated that adults’ eyes alone could convey as much information as their faces
could. This study aimed to test whether young children could recognize four basic emotion states
through the eyes alone. Revised Baron-Cohen (1997)’s paradigm was used to examine 159
participants from 4 to 7 years old. There were significant differences between face and eyes alone,
eyes alone and mouth alone. It was suggested for very younger children the eyes could convey as
much information of basic emotion as whole face could, and the eyes alone could be emotional
cues to young children.
386