Interrelationships between Theory of Mind and language development: A longitudinal study of Dutch-speaking kindergartners

Mulder, Hannah N. M. De; Wijnen, Frank; Coopmans, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.03.006

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Similarly, a number of studies with Cantonese‐ and English‐speaking children by Cheung and colleagues (e.g., Cheung, 2006; Cheung et al., 2004) suggest that children's general language comprehension, as measured in standardized tests of grammar and vocabulary, is a better predictor of their false‐belief reasoning than the more specific measure of complement‐clause comprehension. Similar results have been reported for Dutch, a language closely related to German (and English; De Mulder et al., 2019). In the current study, we used a sentence‐repetition task to measure children's short‐term memory.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…What did he think?” And they were expected to say “he found his ring” or just “ring.” Children who did not understand the subordinate structure of complement‐clause constructions often wrongly responded with “bottle cap.” Alternatively, it has been suggested that children failed to provide the correct answer because of processing difficulties rather than lack of syntactic knowledge. In particular, Lutken, Legendre, and Omaki (2020), p. 40) suggested that children struggle with complex questions such as “What did he say he stole” because memory limitations make it difficult or impossible for them to integrate the complement clause into the matrix (e.g., “What did he say”; see also De Mulder, Wijnen, & Coopmans, 2019). In addition, children with limited short‐term memory might also find it difficult to remember the details from the story context, which are needed to answer the question.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, De Mulder et al. (2019) developed a test of complement‐clause understanding that did not involve any false‐belief scenario and found no longitudinal relationship between children's understanding of complement‐clause constructions and their understanding of false belief. At the same time, Boeg Thomsen, Theakston, Kandemirci, and Brandt (2021) also tested children's comprehension of complement‐clause constructions without a false‐belief scenario and were able to replicate the original findings by de Villiers and Pyers (2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Putting Complement Clauses into Context: Testing the Effects of Story Context, False‐Belief Understanding, and Syntactic form on Children's and Adults’ Comprehension and Production of Complement Clauses

2023

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A key factor that affects whether and at what age children can demonstrate an understanding of false belief and complement‐clause constructions is the type of task used (whether it is implicit/indirect or explicit/direct). In the current study, we investigate, in an implicit/indirect way, whether children understand that a story character's belief can be true or false, and whether this understanding affects children's choice of linguistic structure to describe the character's belief or to explain the character's belief‐based action. We also measured children's understanding of false belief in explicit false‐belief tasks. English‐ and German‐speaking young 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds as well as English‐ and German‐speaking adult controls heard complement‐clause constructions in a story context where the belief mentioned in the complement clause (e.g., “He thinks that she's not feeling well”) turned out to be false, true, or was left open. After hearing the test question (“Why does he not play with her?”), all age groups were most likely to repeat the whole complement‐clause construction when the belief turned out to be false. That is, they tended to explicitly refer to the character's perspective and say “He thinks…” When the belief turned out to be true, participants often reverted to a simple clause (“She's not feeling well”). Furthermore, children with better short‐term memory were more likely to repeat the whole complement‐clause construction. However, children's performance in explicit false‐belief tasks showed no relation to their performance in our novel, more implicit/indirect, task. Whether or not the complement clause was introduced by a that complementizer only had a small effect on the German adults’ responses, where leaving out the complementizer also changes the word order of the complement clause. Overall, our results suggest that task characteristics and individual differences in short‐term memory affect children's ability to demonstrate false‐belief understanding and to express this understanding linguistically.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Putting Complement Clauses into Context: Testing the Effects of Story Context, False‐Belief Understanding, and Syntactic form on Children's and Adults’ Comprehension and Production of Complement Clauses

2023

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“…This is consistent with the results of the Poltrock (2010) study, where after controlling for age, sentential complement syntax was no longer associated with nonverbal FB in TD children. Similar results were obtained in the longitudinal study, where De Mulder et al (2019) found that first-year sentential complement syntax failed to predict second-year nonverbal FB. This indicates, to some extent, that TD children’s FB comprehension representations are related to nonverbal factors, such as age.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Similar results were obtained in the longitudinal study, where De Mulder et al (2019) found that first-year sentential complement syntax failed to predict second-year nonverbal FB. This indicates, to some extent, that TD children's FB comprehension representations are related to nonverbal factors, such as age.…”

Section: The Relationship Between Different Types Of Complement Synta...supporting

confidence: 82%

Relationship between different types of complement syntax and false belief in Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children

Guo

Pan²,

Liu³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have shown that complement syntax is closely associated with false belief (FB) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the relationship between different types of complement syntax and FB remains unclear. This study examined the relationship between different types of complement syntax and FB in both ASD and typically developing (TD) children. Thirty Mandarin-speaking ASD and TD children, each matched for language ability, were included. Children completed different types of complement syntax tasks, verbal and nonverbal FB. For the ASD children, results demonstrated that sentential complement syntax independently predicted verbal and nonverbal FB, while phrasal complement syntax only predicted nonverbal FB. For the TD children group, sentential complement syntax only predicted verbal FB. This indicates that as the language demands of the FB task decrease, ASD children can use both types of complement syntax for its prediction. Moreover, the characteristics of ASD children differ from TD children in terms of the relationship between different types of complement syntax and FB. The results of this study support de Villiers’ point of view from the Mandarin perspective and provide evidence for the social-cognitive component of the theory of mind.

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Surveying Computational Theory of Mind and a Potential Multi-agent Approach

Kumar,

Raglin,

Richardson

2024

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Interrelationships between Theory of Mind and language development: A longitudinal study of Dutch-speaking kindergartners

Cited by 13 publications

References 46 publications

Putting Complement Clauses into Context: Testing the Effects of Story Context, False‐Belief Understanding, and Syntactic form on Children's and Adults’ Comprehension and Production of Complement Clauses

Putting Complement Clauses into Context: Testing the Effects of Story Context, False‐Belief Understanding, and Syntactic form on Children's and Adults’ Comprehension and Production of Complement Clauses

Relationship between different types of complement syntax and false belief in Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder and typically developing children

Surveying Computational Theory of Mind and a Potential Multi-agent Approach

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