Abstract:Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991;. It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction.Keywords: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein et al. 1998;Symons & Clark 2000), mothers' education (Cutting & Dunn 1999), and socioeconomic circumstances (Holmes et al. 1996).Furthermore, a number of studies have found correlations between language and social understanding (e.g., Cutting & Dunn 1999; de Villers 2000; Happé 1995;Jenkins & Astington 1996). In longitudinal studies, forms of family talk about mental states have been found to be related to later success on false belief tests (e.g., Brown et al. 1996;Dunn et al. 1991a;Ruffman et al. 2002). In addition, mothers who think of their children in mentalistic terms ("mindmindedness"), and therefore, presumably talk to their children about the psychological world, have children who are more advanced in understanding beliefs than are other children (Meins & Fernyhough 1999;Meins et al. 1998). Similar correlations between family interaction and the development of children's understanding of emotions have also been reported (e.g., Dunn et al. 1991b;Hooven et al. 1995;Kuebli et al. 1995;Steele et al. 1999). In a longitudinal study, Astington and Jenkins (1999) found that earlier language abilities predict later false belief performance but earlier false belief competence does not predict later language abilities, supporting the conclusion that language is important in social cognitive development.Another source of evidence that social interaction is important for the development of a mentalistic understanding comes from research with deaf children. A number o...

Data from an epidemiological sample (n = 1206) of British schoolchildren were used to estimate the proportions of 9- to 10-year-olds with specific arithmetic difficulties (SAD), combined with arithmetic-and-reading difficulties (ARD), and specific reading difficulties (SRD). Children in the sample contributed scores on separate tests of arithmetic, reading and nonverbal intelligence. Using a cutting-score approach, which took into account performance on all three tests, a small group of children with SAD (1.3%) were distinguished from larger groups with ARD (2.3%) and SRD (3.9%). Contrary to some previous reports, there were equal numbers of males and females within each of the two groups with arithmetic difficulties but a preponderance of males over females amongst the group with specific reading difficulties.

This study assessed executive function and mental state understanding in Korean preschoolers. In Experiment 1, forty 3.5- and 4-year-old Koreans showed ceiling performance on inhibition and switching measures, although their performance on working memory and false belief was comparable to that of Western children. Experiment 2 revealed a similar advantage in a sample of seventy-six 3- and 4-year-old Koreans compared with sixty-four age-matched British children. Korean children younger than 3.5 years of age showed ceiling effects on some inhibition measures despite more stringent protocols and the link between executive function and mental state understanding was not as strong as in the British sample. The results raise key questions about the nature and development of the executive system and its relation to social understanding.

One hundred twenty-eight 5- to 7-year-old children were interviewed using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol about an event staged 4 to 6 weeks earlier. Children were prepared for talking about the investigated event using either an invitational or directive style of prompting, with or without additional practice describing experienced events. The open invitation prompts (including those using children's words to encourage further reporting) elicited more detailed responses than the more focused directive prompts without reducing accuracy. Children were most responsive when they had received preparation that included practice describing experienced events in response to invitation prompts. Overall, children were highly accurate regardless of prompt type. Errors mostly related to peripheral rather than central information and were more likely to be elicited by directive or yes/no questions than by invitations. Children who provided accounts when asked about a false event were less accurate when describing the true event. Children who received preparation that included practice recalling a recent event in response to directive and yes/no questions were least accurate when questioned about the false event first. The data provide the first direct evaluation of the accuracy of information elicited using different prompt types in the course of NICHD Protocol interviews, and underscore the importance of how children are prepared for subsequent reporting.

Some recent studies have found a relation between the number of siblings 3-4-year-old children have and their performance on false belief tasks. 2 experiments reported here examine a variety of factors in children's social environments, including daily contact with peers and adults as well as the numbers of their siblings, on a battery of false belief tests. In Experiment 1, 82 preschoolers were studied in Rethymnon, Crete, in order to obtain a range of extended kin available as a resource for the child. In Experiment 2, 75 Cypriot preschoolers were studied in Nicosia in order to examine the influences of each child's daily social contacts, as measured by maternal questionnaire. Logistic regression revealed that the factors which account for most of the predicted variance on the theory of mind tests were (a) the number of adult kin available (Experiment 1) or adults interacted with daily (Experiment 2), (b) the child's age, (c) the number of older siblings a child has, and (d) the number of older children interacted with daily. The results suggested that theory of mind is not simply passed from one sibling to another in a process of social influence. It seems more likely that a variety of knowledgeable members of her or his culture influence the apprentice theoretician of mind.