The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of parents' attachment and empathy on infants' mind reading and empathy. In this study, Infants' mind reading and empathy were measured by interview with 90 4-, 5-years-old infants in Gyeongb...
The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of parents' attachment and empathy on infants' mind reading and empathy. In this study, Infants' mind reading and empathy were measured by interview with 90 4-, 5-years-old infants in Gyeongbuk Province and Ulsan areas, and questionnaires of parents' attachment and empathy were administered to 90 fathers and mothers respectively.
In brief, results of this research are as followings.
First, as a result of recognizing about correlations between lower factors of parents' attachment and empathy with mind reading and empathy, father's attachment showed positive relations significantly with mother's attachment, father's cognitive empathy, and father's emotional empathy, and also mother's attachment was appeared as having positive relations significantly with father's emotional empathy, mother's cognitive empathy, and mother's emotional empathy. Father's cognitive empathy showed significant positive relations with father's emotional empathy, and father's emotional empathy was appeared as having negative relations with mind reading of infants. And mother's cognitive empathy and emotional one showed significant positive relations.
Second, father's cognitive empathy and emotional one, mother's cognitive empathy and emotional one by making mind reading of infants as subordinate variables, the explaining rate of infants' mind reading from these total variables was 15% significantly as a result of doing multiple regression analysis of father's attachment and mother's one. Father's emotional empathy affected negative influences to mind reading of infants, and mother's emotional empathy affected positive influences to the mind reading.
Third, as a result of doing multiple regression analysis on father's attachment and mother's one, father's cognitive empathy and emotional one, and mother's cognitive sympathy and emotional one by making infants' empathy, these total variables did not affect significant influences to infants' empathy.
Fourth, this study carried out a correlation analysis by factors on mind reading and empathy. If looking into relations between 3 lower factors of measuring mind reading from infants, positioning tasks showed significant positive relations with social false belief task and real task of emotional appearances. Social false belief task was appeared as having significant positive relations with joy understanding that was a lower factor of empathy.
Based on the above results, this research's meanings could be said as follows. The study confirmed a fact that parents' emotional empathy affected influences to mind reading of infants with different directions each other, and has a meaning in that it suggested on which elements among empathy's components had to be used in detail, and made the empathy understood from composite viewpoints at the same time. Therefore, this study implies the necessity of developing empathy education programs together with the importance of parent's empathy.