Research On Characteristics And Relations Of Theory Of Mind, Attachment To Grandparents And Peer Acceptance Among Children Aged 3-5 With Skip-generation Raising

Today in Chinese society, if parents do not have enough time and energy, their children were put to grandparents for raising, which is so-called skip-generation raising. With change of society, increasing of family economic burden and continual changing of family structure, number of skip-generation raising has occupied considerable proportion in contemporary family, therefore, psychological status of children with skip-generation raising also needs to be concerned by the research community. The Theory of Mind, attachment and peer relation are popular issues in psychological development among children aged 3～5, therefore, research on them among children aged 3～5 with skip-generation raising can not only further develop attachment theory and ecosystem theory, but also can look for better breakthrough point to create a good environment for the healthy growth of children aged 3-5 with skip-generation raising and provide the basis to improve the socialization problem of children aged 3～5 with skip-generation raising.So as to examine Theory of Mind's, attachment's to grandparents, peer acceptance's characteristics and their relationship, this research investigated 95 children aged 3～5 with skip-generation raising in Wenzhou city, Zhejiang province by three measures of Theory of Mind including false belief task, emotional understanding task and deception task, two attachment scales and peer nomination.Through analysis of the results of experimental data, this study reached the following conclusions:Conclusion 1. Like average children, theory of mind of children aged 3～5 with skip-generation raising gradually improved with the increase of age, whose key of the development was 4 years old. Gender was not the influence factor of it. False belief task, emotional understanding task and deception task were significantly positively related to each other.Conclusion 2. Attachment quality of children aged 3-5 with skip-generation raising was partial good, but secure-attached proportion was a little lower than that of average children, escaped and confused-attached proportion was higher. There were not significant gender differences on attachment to grandparents.Conclusion 3. Social preference of children aged 5 was lower than that of children aged 4, which was not same as average children. Girls were easier accepted and liked than boys. Like average children, the proportion of popular children, controversial children, neglected children and rejected children was 2/3 in the total number, and the rest 1/3 was average children.Conclusion 4. Attachment to grandparents in children with skip-generation raising was significantly related to emotional understanding task of Theory of Mind, and was not related to false belief task and deception task. Attachment to grandparents was mildly positively related to facial recognition, and was moderately positively related to emotional social perspective-taking. There were significant attachment type differences in emotional understanding task.Conclusion 5. The more popular children with skip-generation raising were, the better false belief performance were. The scoring order of false belief was popular children, controversial children, rejected children, average children and neglected children. Peer acceptance was not related to emotional understanding task, and social preference was mildly related to deception task.Conclusion 6. Peer acceptance of children with skip-generation raising can predict false belief of Theory of Mild. Attachment to grandparents can significantly predict emotional understanding of Theory of Mind. Attachment to grandparents and peer acceptance can not predict deception of Theory of Mind.