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The present study attempted to operationalize the constructs of empathy and egocentrism and contrast them with a cognitive explanation of the behavior of children on a task which required "S" to identify the affective state of himself and of others. Forty "Ss," aged 3-5, were presented a series of 23 stories describing an event which had occurred to a same-sex child (O). "S" was asked to indicate "how O felt" by pointing to one of five faces which "S" had previously identified as Happy, Sad, Afraid, Mad, and Neutral. With each stimulus story, "S" was also asked to show how he felt. A counterbalanced design was employed in which half the "Ss" were questioned regarding their own affective state prior to indicating how O felt, while the remaining "Ss" responded to O's affective state first. Order of questioning had no effect on "Ss" responses. Results indicate that: (a) young children are capable of correctly identifying the affective states of others (57 percent); (b) their self-responses are generally unrelated to their O-responses (69 percent); (c) "Ss" typically described themselves as Happy (67 percent) regardless of the emotion described in the stimulus; and (d) errors tend to be random, i.e. unrelated to either the particular affective state described in the story or to their S-response (80 percent). Neither empathy nor egocentrism account for "Ss" performance on this task; rather, "Ss" appear to have a cognitive understanding of O's affective state. (Author/CS)