Abstract: The emotion understanding is an important component of theory of mind and it plays a key role in our social life. According to Tager-Flusber & Sullivan’s cognitive model of theory of mind, social perceptional component including emotion understanding develops before social cognitive component. However, social perceptional component and social cognitive component could not be separated easily with age growing up. Hence, there are different levels in emotion understanding: simple emotion understanding, emotion based desire and belief understanding, mixed emotion understanding and emotion regulation. The previous researches on the development of children’s emotion understanding in recently twenty years were reviewed. Besides, some possible methodological improvement and contents’ extending are suggested.

Key words: theory of mind, emotion understanding, false belief understanding.