Abstract: Studies were conducted to investigate the ability to understand negative emotions and explore how inhibition control and empathy affected childrens emotion understanding among 86 children aged 3 to 6 years by using color as a symbol for emotion. The results showed children using different colors to symbolize emotions of different valences, and innteraction between inhibitory control and empathy was found on the understanding of negative emotions. Children with strong inhibitory control better understood others negative emotions, regardless of empathy, and empathy only affected children with weak inhibitory control. Besides, effects of different components of empathy on understanding of negative emotions varied with age. Affective empathy played a major role in 3-to 4-year-olds, while cognitive empathy played a major role in 5-to 6-year-olds. These findings suggest that color as a symbol for emotion was an effective way to study childrens emotion understanding. Inhibition control and empathy affect the negative emotion understanding of 3~6 year olds. High inhibition control promotes childrens understanding of negative emotions, while low inhibition control requires childrens empathy involvement.

Key words:  , preschooler, understanding of negative emotions, empathy, inhibitory control