The Development Of Anti-fact Thinking Ability Of Children Aged 3-5 In Different Psychological Fields

Counterfactual thinking refers that people psychologically tend to deny the events happened in the past, and to construct a hypothesis which might happen, but actually not. It is an important characteristic of human consciousness. In recent years, studies on children counterfactual thinking have become popular in the field of developmental psychology. But studies about whether children's counterfactual thinking is domain general or domain special are still in their infancy. And the results are inconsistent. Therefore, on the basis of previous studies, this study is purpose to explore how 3 to 5 years old children develop their counterfactual thinking ability under the different domains and the influencing factors.There are two studies in this research. In study 1, we use the outcome counterfactual reasoning paradigm to test 88 participants from a preschool. We use 3(years:3,4,5 years old) x3(domains:mental domain, conventional domain, prudential domain) x2(outcome valence:positive outcome, negative outcome) mixed experimental design to explore children's outcome counterfactual thinking ability under different domain knowledge and the influence of the outcome valence. Results indicated that:(1) 3 year-old children already can generate outcome counterfactual thinking, and the ability of 3-5 year-old children's outcome counterfactual thinking gradually increases with age. (2) The children's ability of outcome counterfactual thinking is domain special. They performed better in prudential domain than the mental domain and the conventional domain. (3) The outcome valence can influence the development of children's outcome counterfactual thinking. Compared to positive outcomes, they do better under the negative outcomes.In study 2, we use the antecedent counterfactual reasoning paradigm to test 117 participants from a preschool. And we use 3(years:3,4,5 years old)×3(domains: mental domain, conventional domain, prudential domain) x2(the seriousness of outcome:generally serious outcome, very serious outcome) mixed experimental design to explore the development of children's antecedent counterfactual thinking ability and the influence of the seriousness of the outcomes. Results indicated that:(1) 3 year-old children can already generate the antecedent counterfactual thinking. And the ability of 3-5 year-old children's antecedent counterfactual thinking gradually increases with age. (2) 3-5 year-old children generate more additive structures counterfactual thinking than subtractive structures counterfactual thinking. And the number of the additive structures counterfactual thinking increase significantly with the ages. But the number of subtractive structures counterfactual thinking doesn't increase significantly with the ages. (3) The children's ability of antecedent counterfactual thinking is domain special. The children's performance under the prudential domain is better than the mental domain, and the performance under the mental domain is better than the conventional domain. (4) The seriousness of the outcome influenced the development of children's antecedent counterfactual thinking. They generate more antecedent counterfactual thinking under the very serious outcome than the generally serious outcome.In summary, we drew the following conclusions:Firstly,3 year-old children can generate outcome counterfactual thinking. And the ability of 3-5 year-old children's counterfactual thinking gradually increases with age.Secondly, the children's ability of counterfactual thinking is domain special. The children's performance under the prudential domain is better than the mental domain, and the performance under the mental domain is better than the conventional domain.Thirdly, the outcome valence and the seriousness of the outcome both influence the development of children's counterfactual thinking.