Developmental Characteristics And Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility And Emotional Understanding In Preschoolers Aged 3-6

3～6 years is a critical period for the development of cognitive flexibility and emotional understanding.Cognitive flexibility and emotional understanding not only affect children’s speech development and learning,but also play a predictive role in children’s school-age and even future academic performance and peer relationship.However,previous studies are not comprehensive enough on the development characteristics of children’s cognitive flexibility and emotional understanding,and the sample size is small,so there is no high consistency between the results.Therefore,a total of 482 children aged3～6 years came from two kindergartens were selected in a central China city.The DCCS and emotion understanding task were used to investigate the relationship and development characteristics of preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility and emotional understanding ability.The DCCS task was used to investigate the developmental characteristics of preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility in research one.The results showed that:The age main effect was significant,after 5years of age is significantly greater than before 5 years of age.The gender main effect was significant,girls scored significantly higher than boys.Further analysis showed that age and gender had significant interaction.The emotion understanding task was used to investigate the developmental characteristics of preschoolers’ emotional understanding in research two.This study includes two parts: facial expression recognition and emotional situation comprehension.According to the task requirements,the children were tested with pictures with cartoon facial expressions,in which age,gender,were the inter-subject variables,task type was the inter-subject variable,and their scores were the dependent variables.The results showed that: 1.facial expression recognition: The age main effect was significant,the gender main effect was significant,girls scored significantly higher than boys.The expression type main effect was significant,the development of facial recognition follows the order of happy,angry,sad and afraid.The interaction was not significant.2.emotional situation comprehension: The age main effect was significant,the gender main effect was not significant,the task type main effect was significant.The scores of identification of emotional situation,understanding of desire and emotional relationship were significantly higher than those of understanding of belief and emotional relationship,and understanding of clue and emotional relationship.The development of emotional situation understanding followed the hierarchical order of identification of desire,identification of emotional situations,clue and belief.The interaction between task type and gender was significant,as was the interaction with age.The relationship between children’s cognitive flexibility and emotional understanding was explored in research three.The results showed that:There is a significant correlation between the two,further analysis showed that cognitive flexibility significantly predicted children’s facial expression recognition,discrimination of emotional situations,and understanding of desire and emotional relationships.Based on the above results,the following conclusions are drawn:1.In emotion recognition: the cognitive flexibility scores of children after the age of 5 were significantly higher than those of children before the age of 5.2.In emotion recognition:(1)Children recognized facial expressions of happiness,sadness,anger much better than fear.Children aged 3 already had a good command of recognizing facial expression of happiness,sadness,anger.Children’s recognition of fear expression developed rapidly after 5 years old.(2)Girls performed better on recognizing the expression of fear than boys.3.In emotional situation understanding:(1)The development of children’s emotional situation understanding follows the order of emotional understanding identification of desire /identification of emotional situations-memory-belief.Children aged 3 already had a good command of emotional understanding in identification of identification of emotional situations /understanding of desires and emotional relationships.Children’s emotional understanding based on memory and belief develops rapidly after 5 years old.(2)Girls performed better on understanding the relationship between belief and emotion than boys.4.The relationship between the two: the cognitive flexibility score can significantly predict the facial expression recognition,identification of emotional situations,understanding the relationship between desire and emotion.