Structure of the Concept of Sadness in Preschool and Early School Age Children

Abstract

The article presents research on the structure and content of the concept of sadness, based on the statements of preschool and early school age children. The research was carried out in a transverse (transversal) system among children selected from six age groups: 4;0 -4;11, 5;0-5;11, 6;0-6;11, 7;0-7;11, 8;0-8;11, 9;0-9;11.

Data collected from a sample of 240 children were used to analyze the test results. There were 20 girls and 20 boys in each of the six designated age group. In order to describe the content and structure of emotional concepts the experimental technique created by S. Grabias (2012) was used. It allowed to obtain an information on six basic components of a given concept, i.e. definition/definition category, carrier, features, activities, causes, circumstances/effect and in addition his assessment.