EN
The aim of this study was to characterize the knowledge about the joy in children with mild intellectual disability. The premises relating to the mental functioning of these children suggest that this knowledge is poorer and less complex than the knowledge of their peers in the intellectual norm. The study used the authoring tool to measure children’s knowledge of emotions, including joy. The tool takes into account the cognitive representation of the basic emotions available in three codes: image, verbal, semantic and interconnection between the codes – perception, symbolization and conceptualization, which perform the functions of perception, expression and understanding. The study included children with the intellectual norm (N = 30) and children with mild intellectual disability (N = 30). The results mainly indicate the differences in how happiness is understood by particular groups, to the detriment of children with disability. The character of the results is largely determined by the level of organization of knowledge about joy and accompanying mental operations.