Primary Children's Emotional Expression Of The Relationship Between Cognitive Development And Its Relationship With The Companion Rules And Social Behavior

Cognitive development of children's emotional display rules(EDRs) is an important part of children's emotion cognition development, and it also plays an important role on development of children's social ability. So, more and more researchers pay attention to this field. EDRs cognition was mainly classified as three components: emotion regulation knowledge, emotion regulation goals and emotion regulation strategies. Emotion regulation knowledge represents the discrepancy between the character's internal feeling and external emotional expression; emotion regulation goals refer to children's developmental trends in the articulation of goal orientations, there are two types of goals: self protect goal and social orientation goal; emotion regulation strategies mean what kind of strategy children choose to follow their emotional display rules, and there are four kinds of strategies: neutralization, masking, minimization and maximization.215 participants were selected from 1st, 3rd and 5th grade in a primary school as the objectives in our research. In study 1, we examined the cognitive development of children's EDRs in different emotion situation, grade and gender by interviewing children one by one. Based on the results of study 1, The relationship of children's EDRs and social behavior and peer relationship was analyzed in study 2. The major findings in the above two studies are as follows:(1) The level of children's EDRs increased with age. 8 years old children's level of emotion regulation knowledge and emotion regulation goal cognition is higher than 6 years old children's. 10 years old children's level of emotion regulation knowledge and social orientation goal cognition is higher than 8 years old children's.(2)Girls reported more emotion regulation knowledge and more social orientation goals than boys, while boys reported more self-protect goals than girls.(3)The level of children's EDRs in negative emotion situation is significantly high than in positive emotion situation.(4)The order of frequency of emotion regulation strategies children use is: neutralization, masking, minimization and maximization. (5) There were significant situation differences in masking, minimization and maximization strategies. children use more masking and maximization strategies in negative emotion situation than positive emotion situation. children use more minimization strategies in positive emotion situation than negative emotion situation.(6) The grade effect is significant in neutralization and masking strategies. children of 8 years old use more neutralization and masking strategies than children of 6 years old.(7) Girls use significantly more masking strategy than boys.(8) The level of children's emotion regulation knowledge, emotion regulation goals and social orientation goal is positively related to prosocial and leading behaviors, is negatively related to aggressive behaviors.(9) The level of children's emotion regulation knowledge, emotion regulation goals and social orientation goal is positively related to children's peer acceptance, is negatively related to their peer rejection.(10) Children's EDRs has no directly influence on peer relationship. social behavior is a indirect effect on relationship between children's EDRs and peer relationship. Children's EDRs first positively effects their prosocial and leading behavior, then positively effects their peer relationship. Children's EDRs first negatively effects their aggressive behavior, then negatively effects their peer relationship.