La comprensione della mente nei bambini. Un laboratorio linguistico con storie per la scuola dell'infanzia
... Finally, some training studies, which address the problem of the excessive artificiality of the setting, were carried out in the ecological setting of a kindergarten (Cigala & Fangareggi, 2011;Esteban, Sidera, Serrano, Amadò, & Rostan, 2010;Grazzani Gavazzi & Ornaghi, 2011;Ornaghi, Brockmeier, & Grazzani, 2011;Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009). This brief review of training studies takes into consideration only research concerned with typically developing children; however, it is still very important to emphasise the presence of a number of studies that examine the possibility of teaching perspective taking abilities to children with atypical development, in particular with autistic spectrum disorders (Fisher & Happé, 2005;Gould, Tarbox, O'Hora, Noone, & Bergstrom, 2011;Heagle & Rehfeldt, 2006;McGregor, Withen, & Blackburn 1998;Paynter & Peterson, 2013;Rehfeldt, Dillen, Ziomek, & Kowalchuk, 2007). ...
... In particular, we considered three different components of perspective taking: cognitive, visual and affective. We expected a significant increase in the scores obtained by the experimental group, exposed to the training, at the post-test evaluation for all the variables assessed (Appleton & Reddy, 1996;Charman & Baron-Cohen, 1992;Esteban et al., 2010;Heagle & Rehfeldt, 2006;Kloo & Perner, 2008;Knoll & Charman, 2000;Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009;Pillow et al., 2002;Rehfeldt et al., 2007). Moreover we hypothesised that this increase would be significantly higher with regard to the control group, which was not exposed to the training (Hypothesis 1). ...
... The scores of the experimental group did not show any significant differences between the results of the post-test and follow-up phase, confirming that the changes in the children's skills recorded after the training remained even after a period of six months. In the literature, similar research conducted in kindergarten underlined that increases in emotional competences were achieved after specific training, even if they were unable to demonstrate the maintenance over time of the acquired abilities due to the absence of a follow-up session (Esteban et al., 2010;Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009;Ornaghi et al., 2011;Peskin & Astington, 2004). ...
Perspective taking, defined as the ability to assume another's perspective, can be considered a multidimensional construct which is composed of three different components: cognitive, visual and affective. This study wanted to verify the possibility of promoting perspective taking in preschoolers using ecological training. The maintenance of children's acquired abilities after six months was also assessed. Subsequently, analyses were conducted to examine if a possible increase in these competences could positively influence prosocial disposition and determine a decrease of aggressiveness. The design was a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental procedure with independent samples: an experimental and a control group, each one with 30 children aged 3–5. Results showed a significant improvement in most of the investigated areas after the training, confirming the possibility of promoting perspective taking abilities. Moreover, children with greater perspective taking skills were also more inclined to behave in a prosocial way during peer interactions. Furthermore, these changes were persistent at the follow-up session six months later.
... prior consultation of databases, numerous scientific journals related to psychological development, both international (e.g., Child Development, Educational Psychology Review, Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, Infant and Child Development, Journal of Cognition and Development) and Italian (Psicologia clinica dello sviluppo, Giornale italiano di psicologia) had been found, together with textbooks. We specify that we consulted books because of the presence of empirical studies inside them (Hülsken 2001;Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi 2009). Subsequent reading of the abstracts of articles and book chapters was used to establish whether the material satisfied the inclusion criteria previously established. ...
... The number of participants considered in the studies varied from a minimum of 22 children (Knoll and Charman 2000) to a maximum of 138 (Lohmann and Tomasello 2003). In reference to age, all studies considered in this review investigated preschoolers (3-5 years), but we have distinguished between those which focused their attention on only one age, in particular, 3 years old (Appleton and Reddy 1996;Knoll and Charman 2000;Lohmann and Tomasello 2003) and 4 years old (Peskin and Astington 2004), and those which have extended the investigation to the entire age group (Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi 2009), as well as the majority of the authors who analyzed children of two adjoining cohorts, either 3 or 4 years old (Clements et al. 2000;Esteban et al. 2010;Guajardo and Watson 2002;Hale and Tager-Flusberg 2003;Melot and Angeard 2003;Ornaghi et al. 2011;Slaughter 1998;Slaughter and Gopnik 1996) or 4-5 years old (Cigala and Fangareggi 2011;Pillow et al. 2002). Most of the studies were conducted on European children, from England (Appleton and Reddy 1996;Clements et al. 2000;Knoll and Charman 2000), Italy (Cigala and Fangareggi 2011;Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi 2009;Ornaghi et al. 2011), Germany (Hülsken 2001;Lohmann and Tomasello 2003), France (Melot and Angeard 2003), and Spain (Esteban et al. 2010), while the remainder involved American preschoolers. ...
... In reference to age, all studies considered in this review investigated preschoolers (3-5 years), but we have distinguished between those which focused their attention on only one age, in particular, 3 years old (Appleton and Reddy 1996;Knoll and Charman 2000;Lohmann and Tomasello 2003) and 4 years old (Peskin and Astington 2004), and those which have extended the investigation to the entire age group (Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi 2009), as well as the majority of the authors who analyzed children of two adjoining cohorts, either 3 or 4 years old (Clements et al. 2000;Esteban et al. 2010;Guajardo and Watson 2002;Hale and Tager-Flusberg 2003;Melot and Angeard 2003;Ornaghi et al. 2011;Slaughter 1998;Slaughter and Gopnik 1996) or 4-5 years old (Cigala and Fangareggi 2011;Pillow et al. 2002). Most of the studies were conducted on European children, from England (Appleton and Reddy 1996;Clements et al. 2000;Knoll and Charman 2000), Italy (Cigala and Fangareggi 2011;Ornaghi and Grazzani Gavazzi 2009;Ornaghi et al. 2011), Germany (Hülsken 2001;Lohmann and Tomasello 2003), France (Melot and Angeard 2003), and Spain (Esteban et al. 2010), while the remainder involved American preschoolers. It's important to underline the necessity to select participants by means of specific parameters. ...
Perspective taking, defined as the ability to take on the visual, cognitive, and affective perspective of others, is considered a highly adaptive skill, vital for the child’s social, intellectual, and emotional development. This article provides a critical analysis of scientific psychological literature from 1995 to the present on the main methods of intervention used to promote perspective taking in developmentally typical preschool children (3-5 years). The focus is on different methodological approaches, and how the cognitive and emotional dimensions that make up this capacity have been developed through specific operational procedures, emphasizing their strengths and critical factors. In particular, it focuses on the intervention methods based on three major analytical perspectives, specifically the cognitive approach [Theory of Mind (ToM)], the behaviorist approach [Relational Frame Theory (RFT)], and finally, the socio-constructionist approach, are compared. Analysis of the collected data has revealed that despite some critical yet controversial factors, it is actually possible to teach and improve perspective taking in preschoolers through different methods, applicable in different contexts and dependent on the involvement of significant adults, such as parents and educators.
... A partire da queste considerazioni, abbiamo predisposto uno strumento che permette di dare voce ai ragazzi e favorisce la loro riflessione sulle proprie modalità di regolare le emozioni a valenza positiva e negativa. Il racconto di sé può essere considerato un mezzo privilegiato nell'indagine dei significati personali (Bruner, 1990), quindi riteniamo sia particolarmente utile fare riferimento a esso desiderando approfondire la sfera emotiva (Grazzani Gavazzi, Ornaghi, 2009). ...
... Il tipo di strategie che i preadolescenti dicono di utilizzare per regolare questa emozione è molto vario; ciò indica che gli strumenti in possesso dei ragazzi per regolare la rabbia sono diversi e articolati. La rabbia è un'emozione solitamente sperimentata nelle relazioni amicali, familiari e nelle situazioni scolastiche, come attestano vari studi condotti con preadolescenti e adolescenti (Grazzani Gavazzi, Ornaghi, 2009); sembra quindi che i ragazzi abbiano molta dimestichezza con questa emozione (Antoniotti, 2007). ...
... Man mano che i bambini crescono, l'uso di tale vocabolario si arricchisce sia perché viene a comprendere una più ampia gamma di termini (includendo espressioni che si riferiscono a emozioni sociali e morali, come colpa, vergogna, imbarazzo ecc.) sia perché i bambini divengono più sensibili alle sfumature semantiche di termini appartenenti alla stessa area di significato, ad esempio "ira", "collera" e "irritazione", per quanto riguarda la rabbia. Il vocabolario delle emozioni è un caso particolare di un più ampio vocabolario, quello degli stati interni mentali, che in letteratura viene comunemente definito lessico psicologico ed è considerato uno strumento importante per indagare lo sviluppo della comprensione della mente o 'teoria della mente' (ToM) da parte dei bambini (Bartsh, Wellman, 1995;Camaioni, Longobardi, Bellagamba, 1998;Lecce, Pagnin, 2007;Ornaghi, Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009;Ornaghi, Grazzani Gavazzi, Zanetti, 2010;Ornaghi, Brockmeier, Grazzani Gavazzi, 2011). Esso comprende, oltre a quelli emotivi, termini percettivi (come "sentire" e "vedere"), volitivi (ad es., "volere", "riuscire"), cognitivi (come "pensare", "credere") e di giudizio morale (ad es., "rispettare", "pentirsi") (Bretherton, Beegley, 1982). ...
The chapter presents a validated instrument (Test of Emotional Lexicon) aimed at evaluating children's knowledge of emotional lexicon.
... In letteratura troviamo diversi studi sui protocolli educativi possibili, attraverso la partecipazione dei bambini a discorsi incentrati su contenuti emotivi (Feshbach & Cohen, 1988;Peng, Johnson, Pollock, Glasspool & Harris, 1992;Bennett & Hiscock, 1993). Nello specifico emerge come bambini di 4 o 5 anni abbiano migliorato la comprensione degli stati emotivi altrui attraverso conversazioni e giochi linguistici dal contenuto emotivo (Grazzani, Gavazzi, Ornaghi & Antoniotti, 2011;Ornaghi, Grazzani & Gavazzi, 2009). All'interno di queste procedure educative, i bambini hanno potuto infatti co-costruire insieme all'adulto una migliore comprensione dell'altro, attraverso la discussione su desideri, credenze ed emozioni altrui (Garfield, Peterson & Perry, 2001;de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006;Hughes, Lecce & Wilson, 2007). ...
... All'interno di queste procedure educative, i bambini hanno potuto infatti co-costruire insieme all'adulto una migliore comprensione dell'altro, attraverso la discussione su desideri, credenze ed emozioni altrui (Garfield, Peterson & Perry, 2001;de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006;Hughes, Lecce & Wilson, 2007). Grazie a questi studi, possiamo individuare come, attraverso una procedura di educazione focalizzata alla comprensione degli stati mentali emotivi e percettivi dell'altro, i bambini potenzino le loro abilità cognitive di falsa credenza e di riconoscimento delle emozioni altrui (Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009;Cigala & Fangareggi, 2011;Cigala, Mori & Fangareggi, 2015;Ornaghi, Brockmeier & Grazzani, 2016). È possibile proporre interventi educativi simili a quelli somministrati in questi studi attraverso laboratori specifici che consentano ai bambini lo sviluppo di abilità empatiche ed emotive. ...
All’interno del panorama scientifico legato alla progettazione per l’infanzia occupa un ruolo molto importante l’attenzione per lo sviluppo delle competenze socio-emotive nei bambini di fascia 0-6 anni. Lo sviluppo adeguato di queste abilità risulta correlato negativamente alla presenza di aggressività nei minori e al bullismo scolastico, specificamente rispetto all’abilità di comprendere stati emotivi altrui (perspective taking emotiva). I protocolli di potenziamento di tali abilità, che possono essere integrati nella progettazione didattica per la fascia 0-6, possonorappresentare un importantissimo alleato nella ricerca di interventi mirati alla marginalizzazione del fenomeno del bullismo, coadiuvando dei minori quelle competenze che possano, in futuro, preservarli dal commettere bullismo.
... Le storie utilizzate come «punto d'avvio» per la conversazione erano le medesime ogni settimana. Più specificamente, ciascuna sessione di training prevedeva la lettura di un racconto illustrato estratto dalla raccolta Le avventure di Jack e Teo (Ornaghi e Grazzani, 2009), 2 e la successiva attività conversazionale. In Appendice, a titolo esemplificativo, è riportata una storia che si riferisce all'emozione di rabbia. ...
The research, carried out on the theoretical background of socio-emotional
competence, reports on findings from a training study conducted in the kindergarten
with 3, 4 and 5 years old children (N = 80). Participants from the experimental group
(n = 40) took part in a training for two and half months during which the researcher
involved children in active conversation on the nature, the causes, and the regulation
of emotion. Children from the control group (n = 40) did not take part in any
conversational activities. Analyses of data showed a significant effect of the training, as
the experimental group outperformed the control group in emotion comprehension.
... During these sessions they listened to stories enriched with psychological terms. The stories were presented in an illustrated story book entitled " The adventures of Jack and Theo " (Ornaghi & Grazzani, 2009), specifically created for the study. The book contained sixteen stories (a sample story is provided in the Appendix) structured according to the story schemas of Stein & Glenn (1979). ...
In: Rundblad, G., Tytus, A., Knapton, O., and Tang, C. (Eds., 2014). Selected Papers from the 4th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference. London: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association (pp.136-151).
This paper focuses on the relationship between children’s psychological lexicon and their development of social cognition as assessed through theory-of-mind and emotion understanding tasks. It provides a brief overview of the topic, describes our own previous data, and reports new findings with a larger sample. Participants in our latest study were 102 children of 3, 4 and 5 years of age, randomly assigned to training or control conditions. All the children were pre- and post- tested with linguistic and cognitive measures to assess their language ability, mental-state talk comprehension, false-belief understanding and emotion comprehension. During the intervention, participants in the training condition were read stories enriched with psychological lexicon and took part in language games and conversations aimed at stimulating the use of inner-state terms. As expected, they outperformed the control group at post-test on most of the administered measures. The intervention brought about a stronger improvement in social cognition in the 3- and 4-year old participants. No gender effect emerged.
... Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have shown that the more a mother uses mental-state terms when speaking to her child, the better the child's understanding of false belief ( Symons, Fossum, & Collins, 2006) and of emotion (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2008; Wang, Doan, & Song, 2010) and the more frequently the child itself makes use of psychological lexicon (Howard, Mayeux, & Naigles, 2008; Scholnick & Hall, 1991). Other research with preschool children has indicated an association between the frequency with which they use mental-state terms during spontaneous conversation and their scores on false-belief ToM tasks (Brown, Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, 1996; Hughes, Lecce, & Wilson, 2007; Ornaghi & Grazzani Gavazzi, 2009; Ruffman et al., 2002; Symons, 2004). Fewer studies however have investigated the relationship between ToM and mental state language in school-age children, despite the fact that competence in both these areas continues to develop throughout the primary school years and beyond (Camaioni, Longobardi, & Bellagamba, 1998; Fox, 1991; Lecce, Caputi, & Pagnin, 2009; Longobardi, Pistorio, & Renna, 2009; Pelletier, 2006). ...
This study investigates the relationship between mental state language and theory of mind in primary school children. The participants were 110 primary school students (mean age = 9 years and 7 months; SD = 12.7 months). They were evenly divided by gender and belonged to two age groups (8- and 10-year-olds). Linguistic, metacognitive and cognitive measures were used to assess the following competencies: verbal ability, use of mental-state terms, understanding of metacognitive language, understanding of second-order false beliefs, and emotion comprehension. Correlations between children’ use of mental-state language and their performance on theory-of-mind tasks were moderate, whereas correlations between children’s comprehension of such language and ToM abilities were high. In addition, regression analyses showed that comprehension of metacognitive language was the variable which best explained children’s performance on both false belief tasks and an emotion comprehension test when verbal ability and age were controlled for.
In the present study the preliminary findings from the Italian validation of the Test of emotional lexicon (TLE) are presented. The TLE is aimed to evaluate 3 to 11 yrs. old children's comprehension of emotional lexicon, an important skill in the development of both theory of mind and emotional competence. Participants were 69 children distributed in three age groups equally distributed by gender: 22 preschoolers (mean age: 63 months; SD: 3.7), 22 7-year-old children (mean age: 92 months; SD: 2.9) and 25 9-year-old children (mean age: 111 months; SD: 4.2). The following instruments were administered: PPVT (Stella et al., 2000), TVM (Iannello & Antonietti, 2006), TEC (Albanese & Molina, 2008) and three false-belief tasks. Analyses showed high correlations between the TLE and the other measures, supporting the construct validity of the test and its utility in early evaluation of difficulties in emotional lexicon comprehension.
Autobiographical memory of emotionally salient events in adolescence:
A narrative study. A descriptive narrative study was
carried out in order to investigate emotionally salient
events, and their link with the construction of self in male
and female adolescents. Participants were 228 subjects,
almost equally divided by gender, aged between 13 years
and a half and 19 years and a half (M = 15 years and 7
months; SD = 1.7), recruited in Milan and hinterland.
Participants were administered a 3-page narrative instrument
called SRAE, tested in a pivotal phase of the
research. They were asked to write three emotionally
salient episodes of their life, particularly important for
their story-life. Five hundred and twenty-eight narratives
were transcribed and codified by two coders, who
reached inter-rater agreements. Two types of analysis
were applied to the narratives: a qualitative content
analysis and a quantitative analysis of mental states language.
Several types of emotion, emotional valence, autobiographical
episodes, context and mental states language
emerged from the analyses. Significant differences
as a function of gender were found: male adolescents reported
more autobiographical episodes related to happy
events; female adolescents recalled a higher number of
sad episodes. Males recalled more episodes focused on
practical performances and achievement of goals, whereas
females recalled more episodes about friendship and affective
relationships. A variety of mental state lexicon
emerged, and gender differences were not found. The
overall findings are referred to a relational sense of self
for females, and a more autonomous sense of self for males.
Questo scritto propone una riflessione critica sul ruolo del linguaggio nello sviluppo dell‟abilità di comprensione della mente, nel periodo che va dall‟infanzia all‟adolescenza. Particolare attenzione viene rivolta al lessico psicologico.
The paper is on the knowledge and use of metacognitive verbs in children and adolescents.
One of the major developments of the second year of human life is the emergence of the ability to pretend. A child's knowledge of a real situation is apparently contradicted and distorted by pretense. If, as generally assumed, the child is just beginning to construct a system for internally representing such knowledge, why is this system of representation not undermined by its use in both comprehending and producing pretense? In this article I present a theoretical analysis of the representational mechanism underlying this ability. This mechanism extends the power of the infant's existing capacity for (primary) representation, creating a capacity for metarepresentation. It is this, developing toward the end of infancy, that underlies the child's new abilities to pretend and to understand pretense in others. There is a striking isomorphism between the three fundamental forms of pretend play and three crucial logical properties of mental state expressions in language. This isomorphism points to a common underlying form of internal representation that is here called metarepresentation. A performance model, the decoupler, is outlined embodying ideas about how an infant might compute the complex function postulated to underlie pretend play. This model also reveals pretense as an early manifestation of the ability to understand mental states. Aspects of later preschool development, both normal and abnormal, are discussed in the light of the new model. This theory begins the task of characterizing the specific innate basis of our commonsense "theory of mind.".
Although the recent focus on functionalist theories of emotions has led to an upsurge of interest in many aspects of emotional development, not enough attention has been paid to young children's developing ability to talk about emotions. In this paper we attempt to place what is presently known about this topic into a framework that emphasizes the intrapsychic and interpersonal functions of emotion. We also consider suggestive evidence concerning the importance of the ability to talk about emotions in the conduct of interpersonal interaction. The paper concludes with some ideas on future directions for research, placing particular emphasis on a functionalist approach to the analysis of emotion-denoting terms.
In the last 20 years, it has been established that children's understanding of emotion changes with age. A review of the extensive literature reveals at least nine distinct components of emotion understanding that have been studied (from the simple attribution of emotions on the basis of facial cues to the emotions involved in moral judgments). Despite this large corpus of findings, there has been little research in which children's understanding of all these various components has been simultaneously assessed. The goal of the current research was to examine the development of these nine components and their interrelationship. For this purpose, 100 children of 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 years were tested on all nine components. The results show that: (1) children display a clear improvement with age on each component; (2) three developmental phases may be identified, each characterized by the emergence of three of the nine components; (3) correlational relations exist among components within a given phase; and (4) hierarchical relations exist among components from successive phases. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.
With remarkable ease, young children acquire significant insight into mental states, their experiences, psychological processes in themselves and others, and the natural world. It is a challenge to developmental theory to understand how they do so. The contributors to this special issue highlight how children's powerfully inductive mental capacities are aided by the conceptual catalysts of conversation, especially with mature partners. Conversation contributes to conceptual growth through the linguistic structures that scaffold developing knowledge (especially of complex and intangible influences) and permit its sharing; through the encounter with divergent perspectives and a more knowledgeable partner; through its influence on representations of past, present, and anticipated events; and as a medium of cultural transmission. Parents' conversational discourse provokes conceptual growth in developing minds, and children also contribute significantly to conversational quality, which is affected by the quality of the parent-child relationship, the emotional climate of the home, and other influences. This article introduces the special issue by profiling these issues and identifying central themes for future research.
Examined the relation between individual differences in 36-mo-old children's conversations about feeling states with their mothers and siblings and their later ability to recognize emotions in an affective-perspective-taking task at 6 yrs. Ss were 41 children observed at home. Differences in discourse about feelings (in frequency, causal discussion, diversity of themes, and disputes) were correlated with later ability to recognize emotions. The associations were independent of children's verbal ability and of the frequency of talk in the families. Results highlight the significance of family discourse in even very young children's developing emotional understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined the development of 3rd-order verbal analogical reasoning in 180 students (aged 10–16 yrs) with 45 enrolled in each of Grades 5, 7, 9, and 11. Ss were administered 7 3rd-order analogy problems that expressed 5 different semantic relationships: functional, categorical, antonymous, synonymous, and sequential. Accuracy in solving 3rd-order analogy problems steadily improved through the 9th grade and was influenced by the semantic relationships that the problems expressed. For example, problems that expressed functional relationships were easier than those that expressed synonymous or sequential relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hypothesized that a rudimentary capacity to impute internal states to self and to other emerges with the onset of communicative intentions. The ability to speak about mental states begins late in the 2nd yr and burgeons in the 3rd yr. Mothers of 30 28-mo-olds were asked to report child utterances containing 6 categories of internal-state words (perception, physiology, affect, volition/ability, cognition, and moral judgment/obligation). Of these, affect, cognition, and moral terms were less common than the others. Ss who applied a specific label to self and other tended to use it also to speak about nonpresent states. Use of a term for only self was more common than use for only other. Causal statements referred primarily to affect. Three categories of causal statements were identified: state change/maintenance, antecedents of states, and definitions of states in terms of other states, physical symptoms, and behaviors. Assessments of internal-state language that were obtained through maternal observation/report and directly from the child were highly correlated. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Bruner, in reassessing the cognitive revolution, argues for the centrality of ‘meaning-making’ in human activity, claiming that children learn to give meaning to what people do as they learn the language and social practices of their culture. The role played by the attribution of mental states to others has been studied intensely in the past decade in a new research area that has come to be known as children’s ‘theory of mind’. Researchers in this field who, unlike Bruner, see psychology as a natural empirical science, view the child as constructing a causal theory to explain and predict human action. They base their arguments largely on experimental observation of children’s performance in laboratory tasks, especially the ‘false-belief’ task. In contrast, many researchers who take Bruner’s view study the development of social understanding in naturalistic observation of children’s interaction with peers and family members. In this article we examine the relations between these views and suggest that the real challenge of the cognitive revolution is to unite the two approaches, to achieve a causal, naturalistic account of the acquisition and elaboration of meaning-making.
An individual has a theory of mind if he imputes mental states to himself and others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly viewed as a theory because such states are not directly observable, and the system can be used to make predictions about the behavior of others. As to the mental states the chimpanzee may infer, consider those inferred by our own species, for example, purpose or intention, as well as knowledge, belief, thinking, doubt, guessing, pretending, liking, and so forth. To determine whether or not the chimpanzee infers states of this kind, we showed an adult chimpanzee a series of videotaped scenes of a human actor struggling with a variety of problems. Some problems were simple, involving inaccessible food – bananas vertically or horizontally out of reach, behind a box, and so forth – as in the original Kohler problems; others were more complex, involving an actor unable to extricate himself from a locked cage, shivering because of a malfunctioning heater, or unable to play a phonograph because it was unplugged. With each videotape the chimpanzee was given several photographs, one a solution to the problem, such as a stick for the inaccessible bananas, a key for the locked up actor, a lit wick for the malfunctioning heater. The chimpanzee's consistent choice of the correct photographs can be understood by assuming that the animal recognized the videotape as representing a problem, understood the actor's purpose, and chose alternatives compatible with that purpose.
The aim of this study was to test two competing causal models concerning the relationship between children's social behaviors and theory of mind. Children between 3 and 4 years of age (n = 20) at the time of first testing were assessed three times over approximately 7 months. Theory of mind was assessed using false belief tasks. Children were videotaped during play with a friend, and measures of pretend play, joint planning, and explicit role assignment were made on the basis of transcripts. Theory of mind understanding was found to predict joint planning and role assignment, after taking into account initial performance on joint planning and role assignment, as well as contemporaneous language ability and age. There was no evidence that social behaviors predicted children's theory of mind.
Children have a spontaneous interest in the world around them, whether the workings of the earth, sun, and stars; the nature of number, time, and space; or the functioning of the body. Yet what is there in their minds that is the key to their knowledge? This book examines what children can and do know, based on extensive studies from a range of different cultures. Topics include 'theory of mind' - the knowledge that others may have beliefs which differ from one's own and from reality - astronomy and geography, food, health and hygiene, processes of life and death, number and arithmetic, as well as autism and brain research on language and attention. Since what children say and do may not really reflect the depth of their knowledge of the world around them, our goal should be to discover new methods to accurately test children's knowledge, instead of trying to understand the range of failing answers they might give on the many tests that have been devised to determine what they know. Contrary to earlier studies, it is now established that in many areas considerable knowledge is within the grasp of young children, with benefits for their later development. For example, although certain number concepts - in particular, fractions, proportions, and infinity - can be difficult to grasp, children generally do not need to undergo a fundamental change in their thinking and reasoning to master these. What the author of this book proposes is that children often display a capacity for understanding that we simply overlook.
Theories of Theories of Mind brings together contributions by a distinguished international team of philosophers, psychologists, and primatologists, who between them address such questions as: what is it to understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of other people? How does such an understanding develop in the normal child? Why, unusually, does it fail to develop? And is any such mentalistic understanding shared by members of other species? The volume's four parts together offer a state of the art survey of the major topics in the theory-theory/simulationism debate within philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, the aetiology of autism and primatology. The volume will be of great interest to researchers and students in all areas interested in the 'theory of mind' debate.
Factors associated with individual variation in false belief understanding were examined. Sixty-eight 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on 4 standard false belief tasks. General language ability and verbal memory were found to be significant predictors of false belief understanding after the effects of age were partialled out, but nonverbal memory was not. There was evidence for a threshold effect in that children did not pass false belief tasks before they reached a certain level of linguistic ability. False belief scores were higher in children from larger families, after the effect of age and language had been partialled out. Family size was more strongly associated with false belief understanding in children who were less competent linguistically, suggesting that the presence of siblings can compensate for slower language development in developing false belief understanding.
This chapter reconceptualizes the acquisition of a "theory of mind" as entering into a "community of minds," where language plays a central role. This reconceptualization is necessary, the chapter argues, because theory of mind is too narrowly construed as a separate cognitive domain to the exclusion of domain general achievements (including language, memory, inference) and social experiences (such as attachment, play, and conversation). Moreover, the chapter asserts that the developmental process some researchers claim to explain advances in children's theory of mind-namely, theory construction and revision-is unwarranted. This chapter argues that entering into the community of minds is a developmental process made possible through language. It makes a special case for the emergence of the representational function of language that allows children to go beyond their own private thoughts and beliefs to consider the thoughts and beliefs of others. This is a Vygotskian view, in which children's experience with external verbal representations in social discourse supports the development of internal verbal representation.
In this study we establish that autistic children have severe and specific difficulty with understanding mental states. Even with a mental age of 7 years, these children mostly fail in tasks which are normally passed around age 3 and 4. We confirm previous results on the poor understanding of false belief but also find that autistic children's grasp of the notion of limited knowledge is grossly delayed. We rule out various other explanations for these results and further show that the autistic child's performance is not limited by failure to understand the causal notion of seeing. Likewise, memory failure cannot be blamed. Language delay can be ruled out as a cause of failure since a group of children with specific language impairment, matched for verbal mental age, performed at ceiling. We propose that autistic children are specifically impaired in their meta-representational capacity and that this impedes their construction of a ‘theory of mind’.
In the present study, we examined children's understanding of the pragmatic function of mental terms to express relative certainty. 69 children between the ages of 3-1 and 8-11 were presented with contrasting pairs of statements by 2 puppets. Different trials contained all the possible pairwise combinations of the terms know, think, and guess. On the basis of what they heard, children were required to find an object hidden in 1 of 2 places. Results showed a significant improvement with age for the know-think and know-guess contrasts, but no improvement with age for the think-guess contrast. By 4 years of age, know was differentiated from think and from guess. In both cases, know was chosen as a more reliable indicator of the location of the object. Further improvement occurred for both contrasts involving the word know between 4 and 5 years of age, so that by 5 years, performance had reached asymptote. These results demonstrate the development of pragmatic competence with mental terms over the preschool period and may also indicate the appearance of the mental state concept of certainty.
Preschool children have traditionally been noted for their ignorance of internal mental events. Consistent with this view, recent studies have found young children to judge mental verbs mistakenly on the basis of external states. The present research examined 2 components of children's developing understanding of mental verbs. First, it was hypothesized that children's ability to distinguish mental from external states would be enhanced under conditions where a subject's directly experienced mental state (i. e., an expectancy or belief) contrasts with external conditions. Second, conditions were designed to examine children's understanding of the different cognitive implications of the mental verbs remember, know, and guess; namely, that remember entails specific prior knowledge, know requires some evidential basis, and guess is distinguished by the absence of such a basis. Results confirmed that young children could differentiate internal from external states under the hypothesized conditions. Preschoolers in this case interpreted the mental verbs with respect to their mental state in contrast to external state. These children were nonetheless ignorant of definitive distinctions between the mental verbs, completely confusing cases of remembering, knowing, and guessing. Evidence is reviewed which indicates that acquisition proceeds from an early sense of distinctive uses of the verbs to later understanding of their definitive descriptions of mental states.
Individual differences in children's talk about inner states are striking, but how should they be interpreted? This study used transcripts of preschoolers’ conversations with siblings and best friends to address this question in two ways. Our first aim was to elucidate the exact nature of individual differences by contrasting categories (emotion/desire vs. cognitive state) and referents (own vs. other/shared) of inner state talk. Our second aim was to compare performance vs. competence views of inner state talk by exploring (i) the stability of individual differences in inner state talk across different relationships and (ii) the cognitive correlates of inner state talk. A sample of 44 children (mean age = 4 years 3 months) was observed for 20 minutes at home playing with a sib and for 20 minutes at school playing with a best friend. Videos were transcribed and coded for the frequency and form of inner state talk (e.g., talk about different categories of inner state, or about own vs. others’ inner states). During the school visits, children completed a set of tasks tapping theory-of-mind skills and verbal ability. Individual differences in inner state talk (especially reference to others’ inner states) were stable across relationships. There was no association between individual differences in talk about cognitive vs. emotion/desire states, although both categories of inner state talk were significantly associated with individual differences in children's theory-of-mind skills.
While it is a notable fact that preschool children use mental verbs which are remarkably abstract and complex in their implications, the developing understanding of such terms is not well understood. The present investigation was concerned with possible early confusion of internal mental states with external facts or events, such as confusing thinking with saying, and with the developing comprehension of different implications of the verbs think and know, namely, that knowing implies knowing a truth whereas thinking can equally be true or false. A story and question task was used in which characters were placed in contrasting states of knowledge and mistaken belief. Results revealed no consistent pattern of confusion of internal and external, and showed that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, comprehended the different implications of the terms.
Research Findings. The present study examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaires and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of a theory of "mind," as indexed by an understanding of false beliefs, might be related to social behavior for this age group. Overall, results indicated that both generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social competence, after controlling for the effects of age, language comprehension, and teacher ratings of aggression. In addition, theory of mind understanding was a better predictor of social competence than performance on a more traditional social information-processing task that involved the generation of alternative solutions to interpersonal problems. Practice. The implications of these findings for preschool and kindergarten peer relations and their potential relevance to treatment of deficits in social skills are discussed. Specifically, training in an understanding of counterfactual thinking (e.g., through increased and structured opportunities to engage in pretend play and storytelling) may enhance preschooler social skills.
Young children's early understanding of emotion was investigated by examining their use of emotion terms such as happy, sad, mud, and cry. Five children's emotion language was examined longitudinally from the age of 2 to 5 years, and as a comparison their reference to pains via such terms as burn, sting, and hurt was also examined. In Phase 1 we confirmed and extended prior findings demonstrating that by 2 years of age terms for the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear are commonly used by children as are terms for such related states as crying and hurting. At this early age children produce such terms to refer to self and to others, and to past and future as well as to present states. Over the years from 2 to 5 children's emotion vocabulary expands, their discussion of hypothetical emotions gets underway, and the complexity of their emotion utterances increases. In Phase 2 our analyses go beyond children's production of emotion terms to analyses of their conception of emotion. We focus especially on when children use emotion terms to refer to subjective experiential states of persons. From their earliest uses of these terms in our data children
Studied the social processes implicated in the early development of children's talk about desires, feelings, and mental states by analyzing the content and context of naturally occurring conversations at home. Six 2nd-born children were observed with their mothers and older siblings at 2-mo intervals from age 24–36 mo. In addition to increases in the frequency with which children referred to internal states, developmental changes were noted in the content and context of their talk. These included (1) more frequent references to others' inner states and (2) more frequent references to the causes and consequences of inner states. Also, maternal references to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of those other than the child increased, and their use of these terms in behavior-controlling contexts decreased. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
there are three broad possibilities for explaining autism / (1) there is a basic affective disorder which somehow produces the other impairments in cognition and surface behaviour / (2) there are two independent basic disorders in autism, one affective, the other cognitive, which jointly produce the surface impairments / (3) there is a basic cognitive deficit in high-ability autism which produces the secondary consequences, including affective disorder and impairment in social and communicative behaviour / it is this last possibility that I want to argue for (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The hypothesis of the 1st and 3rd authors (see record
1983-27705-001) that a conceptual limitation underlies 3-yr-olds' difficulty with false-belief attribution was tested against 3 competing hypotheses. Results from 2 experiments involving 101 3- and 4-yr-olds show that false-belief attribution remained difficult for younger 3-yr-olds, despite their retention of essential facts and attempts to make expectations more explicit and prevent pragmatic misinterpretation. Findings strengthen the original hypothesis, specified as the inability to assign conflicting truth values to propositions. This hypothesis can explain why 3-yr-olds find pretend play, the distinction between expected and achieved outcomes, the real–imaginary distinction, and level 1 perspective taking easier to understand than false belief, the reality–appearance distinction, and level 2 perspective taking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this chapter, the author discusses two different activities that appear to facilitate children's understanding of mind: conversation and pretend play. A review is first presented of the evidence suggesting that each has an influence. Then the author goes on to discuss the relationship between these two factors. The author speculates that variation in conversational input to the child might interact with children's role-taking ability. Under optimal conditions, children will often be invited in the course of conversation to consider the world from another person's point-of-view, and they will have the capacity to respond to those invitations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book will be of interest to psychologists, educators and philosophers. It highlights the child's increasing insight into the complexity and subtlety of our mental life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated 19 3-, 21 6-, 25 9-, and 17 12-yr-olds' understanding of different levels of meaning of the cognitive verb
know as defined by the W. S. Hall et al (see record
1988-26120-001) abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy. Cognitive verb knowledge (CVK) increased with development, and certain low levels of meaning were mastered before certain high levels of meaning irrespective of the medium of presentation (video-taped skits or audio-taped stories). However, Ss developed an understanding of low levels of meaning (LOM) at a more rapid rate than understanding of high LOM. This resulted in a more differentiated and hierarchical CVK in older Ss. The audio-taped stories were more difficult than the video-taped skits, and both tasks were significantly correlated with a standardized vocabulary measure for all ages except the 3-yr-olds. The implications of this study and others for a model of the cognitive-verb lexicon are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
An investigation of narratives written by 135 children aged 9, 11 and 13 years reveals the steady development during middle childhood of children's ability to realize their understanding of mental events within the tradition of story writing. These developments are examined in relation to the representation of the inner world of characters, of expressive behaviour and of inferences about others. Narrative writing is seen as both a source of data for understanding the emergence into awareness of children's developing theories of mind and as a possible means for the development of such awareness.
Two studies are presented which describe how mothers talk about internal states with language-learning toddlers during social interaction. In study 1, mothers' internal state language was assessed longitudinally when toddlers were 13, 20 and 28 months of age. In study 2, mothers' internal state language addressed to prelinguistic children with Down's syndrome was compared to that observed in mothers of non-handicapped children. The non-handicapped children were matched to the children with Down's syndrome in three groups for chronological age, mental age and level of language development. Results indicated that the quantity, complexity, content and attributional focus of mothers' internal state language was significantly affected by the following factors: children's developmental abilities, other child characteristics, differences in social context, and mothers' beliefs about their children's development. Implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.
Developments in children's participation in causal discourse with their mothers and older siblings were studied in the naturally occurring conversations of 50 second-born children observed at home at 33 and 40 months. There were marked increases in discourse about causality, and changes in content and in the social context in which children discussed cause, with an increase in causal talk about inner states and social practices. At 33 months children talked about cause chiefly in attempts to get their own needs met, at 40 months chiefly in reflective discussion. Patterns over time in the discourse measures, and correlations between these measures at 33 months and the children's success on an assessment of understanding of the causes of emotions at 40 months highlighted the continuity in child differences, and the importance of particular pragmatic contexts, including disputes, within which discourse about causality takes place.
Recent research into the development of a child's theory of mind has investigated individual differences in children's acquisition of the concept. Most of the research that has attempted to delineate this acquisition process has approached the question from a social-cognitive developmental perspective, measuring differences such as family size, mother-child interaction and pretend play. Until now there has been little attempt to test empirically the claims which have been made within the psychoanalytic developmental literature-that measures of affective development, such as attachment, are also likely to be related to the development of a theory of mind and emotional understanding. The main finding of the present study was that attachment security (as measured by the SAT) was a significant correlate of theory of mind competence (as measured by a belief-desire reasoning task), even when the contribution of chronological age, verbal mental age and social maturity were controlled for, in preschoolers and young school-aged children.
The relations between children's views on the permissibility of transgressions involving friends, and their justifications concerning such views, and individual differences in their socio-cognitive and temperamental characteristics and family background were studied in 128 4-year-old children (64 pairs of friends) from a wide range of social backgrounds. Children were interviewed about the permissibility of a series of transgressions between friends, tested on a battery of theory of mind, emotion understanding and language assessments, and filmed as they played with a close friend. Views on permissibility and moral justifications were not closely linked. Justification that took account of interpersonal issues was correlated with understanding of mental states and emotions, with behavioural and temperamental characteristics, and with the quality of interaction between the friends. Views on permissibility were related to understanding of inner states, but also independently to parental education and occupation, with those from more highly educated and professional families more likely to judge transgressions as not permissible. Girls were more likely than boys to justify their views in terms of interpersonal issues, differences not explained by verbal ability differences. Regression analyses highlighted the association between girls’ justifications and their understanding of emotions in close relationships, while those of boys were correlated with their understanding of mental states. The significance of understanding inner states for children's moral sensibility, and the possible social processes implicated, are discussed.