The roles of temperamental inhibition in affective and cognitive empathy in Chinese toddlers
The roles of temperamental inhibition in affective and cognitive empathy in Chinese toddlers
复制标题
气质抑制在中国幼儿情感和认知共情中的作用
作者：
Shuyi Zhai;Chenxin Lu;Jinjing Han;Shuiyun Du;Weiyang Wu;Jie He
移情对于和谐的人际关系和道德发展至关重要，它既有情感成分，也有认知成分。此前的研究发现，幼儿的气质抑制可能会影响他们的同理心，但主要集中在对他人痛苦的情绪反应上。关于受抑制儿童的同理心差是由于在分享他人的情感状态时的高反应性和社交退缩，如痛苦(情感同理心)，还是由于难以理解和推断他人的观点(认知同理心)，鲜有人知道。本研究调查了163名中国幼儿的行为抑制(BI)在情感共情(对疼痛模拟的反应)和认知共情(在视角选择任务中的表现)中的作用，并在独生子女和非独生子女中进行了测试。相关分析表明，BI仅与情感共情呈负相关。BI与认知移情之间的关系受到自我调节的调节，自我调节水平低的受抑儿童表现出低认知移情。此外，与非独生子女相比，独生子女表现出较高的认知移情能力，但较差的情感移情能力。这些发现暗示BI在儿童早期的情感移情和认知移情中扮演着不同的角色。尽管高度抑制的儿童很少对他人的痛苦表现出积极的社交表达，但在推断他们缺乏认知移情能力时需要谨慎。
Empathy, crucial to harmonious interpersonal relationships and moral development, has both affective and cognitive components. Previous studies found that toddlers’ temperamental inhibition may influence their empathy, but mainly focused on emotional response to others’ distress. Little is known about whether inhibited children's poor empathy is due to high reactivity and social withdrawal when sharing others’ affective states, such as distress (affective empathy), or to a difficulty in comprehending and inferring others’ perspective (cognitive empathy). The current study investigated the role of behavioral inhibition (BI) in affective empathy (response to pain simulation) and cognitive empathy (performance in perspective‐taking task) among 163 Chinese toddlers and tested in both only and non‐only children. Correlation analyses showed that BI was only negatively associated with affective empathy. The relation between BI and cognitive empathy was moderated by self‐regulation and inhibited children who were low in self‐regulation presented low cognitive empathy. Additionally, only children presented advanced cognitive empathy but poorer affective empathy than non‐only children. These findings imply different roles of BI in affective versus cognitive empathy in early childhood. Although highly inhibited children rarely show positive social expression toward others’ distress, caution is needed in inferring that they lack a capacity for cognitive empathy.