| Summary: | 碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 幼兒教育學系碩士班 === 100 === The main objective of this research are to investigate the development of children’s understanding of emotional display rules, and how the quality of peer relationship and intention relate to the development of children across ages and gender. The participating children consisted of four-years-old, six-years-old and eight-years-old children in the kindergarten and elementary school in Taipei area. There were 90 males and 90 females. The data were collected via child interview. SPSS 12.0 version was used for statistical analysis. Some major findings of this research are as the followings:
1. In each age group, no differences were found in children’s motivation to conceal emotions when facing peers with different relationship quality and intentions. Eight-years-old children can better distinguish relationship quality and intention, and six-years-old children can better distinguish the intention of the peers.
2. The motivation to conceal emotions would increase with age when the negative emotions were triggered by peers with better quality of relationship. On the other hand, in face of peers with worse and fair quality, six-year-old children’s motivation to conceal negative emotions was higher than that of eight-year-old ones. The eight-year-old children were less likely to conceal negative emotions in face of peer with purposed intention. Children aged six were more likely to conceal negative emotions due to self-protective reasons than those aged eight. In general, children’s understanding of display rules increased with age.
3. In face of peer with better quality, boys and girls tended to conceal negative emotions due to maintaining relationship. Girls were more likely to conceal emotions based on relationship quality and intention, whereas boys were more based on peers’ intention. Girls tended to concern the peers’ not-on-purpose situations and concealed emotions more frequently.
4. Boys tended to conceal negative emotions more often in face of peers with fair relationship quality. Girls were more likely to conceal negative emotions due to the prosocial reasons. In face of unintentional peers’ irritating situations, boys tended to conceal negative emotions due to maintaining friendship.
5. In general, children across ages and gender were more likely to conceal negative emotions in face of peers’ unintentional irritation. On the other hand, in face of intentional peers, to avoid trouble became the major concern for children to conceal negative emotions. Avoiding troubles was more likely to be the reason in face of unintentional peers with worse relationship quality than those with better quality. To maintain friendship was more often the reason in face of unintentional peers with fair relationship than those with poor quality.
Discussions of the results are based on developmental theories. Suggestions are made for parents, teachers and future researchers.
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