Exploring the influence of affective perspective-taking on the emotional development of preschoolers

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been recognized as a foundational domain in early childhood education, emphasizing children's capacity to identify, interpret, and respond to emotions within social interactions. Situated within the Taiwanese preschool context, this study explored the developmental progression of affective perspective-taking (APT) and its structural relationship with Theory of Mind (ToM). A two-phase design was employed with a sample of 189 children aged 3–6 years, including the development and psychometric validation of an APT assessment grounded in the Dual Judgment Model. Structural equation modeling supported the model's proposed inferential pathways. In particular, the component “Self in the Current Situation (S)” significantly predicted children's emotional judgments about “Others in a Similar Situation (O)” and “Others in a Different Emotional Situation (OD),” especially among those who had passed the ToM task. For children who had not yet passed, the pathway from “Self in a Different Emotional Situation (SD)” to “OD” remained statistically significant but demonstrated lower explanatory strength. These findings suggest that APT and ToM are developmentally interlinked yet distinct constructs, with APT contributing to the differentiation of self–other emotional understanding. By empirically validating a theoretically grounded framework for assessing APT in preschoolers, this study provides a basis for future research on affective reasoning in early development. The results also highlight potential directions for early childhood practice. Specifically, they underscore the educational value of scaffolding children's emotional inference skills through developmentally appropriate tasks that promote both self-awareness and other-orientation. Although culturally situated in Taiwan, the conceptual contributions of this study may inform international efforts to integrate APT and ToM in the design of SEL curricula, pending further cross-cultural validation.