The educational approach of empathy has been prominently mentioned as a possible solution to the dehumanization occurring as a byproduct of the rapid development of science and technology in modern society. This study aims to identify the characteristics of Korean adolescents on the empathy factor, as a core competency of twenty-first century…

It has been argued that children who possess an advanced theory of mind (ToM) are more likely to act prosocially, yet the empirical findings are mixed. To address this issue definitively, a meta-analytic integration of all prior literature that met appropriate inclusion criteria was conducted. In total, 76 studies including 6,432 children between…

Background: A deficit in empathy is discussed to underlie difficulties in social interaction of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD). To date, no study has compared children with ASD and different subtypes of CD to describe disorder-specific empathy profiles in clinical samples. Furthermore, little is known about…

Seventy-two children were presented with a series of stories involving psychological harm in a game context. Found that older children were more likely than younger ones to base their evaluations on intentions, or both intentions and consequences, and to take into account the recipient's perspective. Game context interacted differentially with…

Describes two experiments that examined children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotion. Discusses the findings in relation to research concerning children's concept of mind, their grasp of the appearance-reality distinction; their ability to produce complex, embedded justifications; and their ideas about emotion.…

Studied age differences in children's understanding of (1) changes in emotional reactions to situations; and (2) the possibility that emotion might be controlled by situational or cognitive strategies. Children aged 4 to 15 years were more likely to suggest situational strategies than cognitive strategies for controlling emotion. (Author/GH)

This paper presents a study of empathy in 6- to 9-year-olds. Although empathy is primarily defined as the response of one individual to the emotional state of another, definitions and assessment can be further differentiated depending on the empathizer's response and on the source of the empathizer's knowledge of the other person. Is the…

Results of two studies investigating children's abilities to use different kinds of cues to infer another's affective state are reported in this paper. In the first study, 48 children (3, 4, and 6 to 7 years of age) were given three different kinds of tasks (interpersonal task, facial recognition task, and vocal recognition task). A cross-age…

In order to determine whether egocentrism can be conceptualized as a unitary construct, 100 children (51 four-year-olds, 37 five-year-olds, and 12 six-year-olds) were administered a visual/spatial perspective task, a cognitive/communicative task, and an affective task. All tasks were designed to measure different facets of egocentrism. The 50…

Preschoolers through second graders were given an opportunity to help another child obtain toys. Help that required a specific form of affective attribution and reconciliation was found to be related to the affective attribution and reconciliation measures when the demands of the helping opportunity matched the social cognition measure demands.…

Used the rational facet approach to examine the relationship between age and perceptions of subconstructs of prosocial behavior on the part of second, fourth, sixth, and eighth graders and adult teachers. Differentiation of subconstructs of prosocial behavior increased with age. (Author/BB)