Abstract: Understanding emotion becomes more and more popular in the resent two decades. Understanding emotion includes two elements: understanding emotional state, and understanding emotional process. Understanding emotional state includes expression recognition, emotion situation recognition, and understanding mixed emotion. Understanding emotional process includes understanding of emotion cause, understanding of desire and belief on emotion, knowledge of emotion display rules and understanding of emotion regulation. The method and development of understanding emotion are reviewed, and the limitations of method and content are discussed. The methods such as social cognitive neuroscience and the natural language analysis are suggested for methodological improvement. The cultural variations in children’s understanding emotion require further study and the materials should be standardized. The process and functional mechanism of understanding emotion are suggested for content improvement. The experimental research in the function of understanding emotion and the personal influencing factors of understanding emotion should be paid more attention in future

Key words: children, understanding emotion, emotion knowledge