Micro-cultural influences on theory of mind development

Abstract

We investigated cultural influences on young children’s acquisition of social-cognitive concepts. A theory of mind (ToM) scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004) was given to 129 children (71 boys, 58 girls) ranging in age from 3 years 0 months to 7 years 10 months. The children were from three distinct cultural groups: (a) trash pickers ( pemulung) living a subsistence lifestyle in Jakarta, Indonesia; (b) middle-class Jakartans living and attending preschools within 5 km of the pemulung group; and (c) middle-class Australians. All children were individually tested in their native language. Cross-group comparisons revealed no significant differences among the three groups in mastery of false belief (the traditional ToM indicator), despite their widely different socio-economic circumstances. However, the pemulung children were slower than the two middle-class groups in mastering two other ToM concepts, namely knowledge access and emotion concealment. These findings shed new light on patterns of cross-cultural consistency in false-belief mastery, as well as revealing cross-cultural variation in other ToM concepts that plausibly reflect variation in children’s everyday life circumstances.

Cultural Variations in the Development of Mind Reading

“…In all of these groups, most 3-year-olds responded incorrectly to the test questions, whereas 5-year-olds responded correctly, suggesting developmental synchrony across cultures in understanding false belief. Similarly, in another study (Kuntoro, Saraswati, Peterson, & Slaughter, 2013), 3-to 7-year-old Indonesian children from two distinct microcultures (middle-class Jakartans and unschooled children working as trash pickers) were indistinguishable from each other and from an age-matched group of middle-class Australians in their performance on a false-belief test.…”

Diversity in Unity: Perspectives from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

“…The second was the ToM scale, which aimed to assess children's understanding of others' mental states. The ToM scale was developed by Wellman and Liu (2004) and has been adapted for Indonesian settings by Kuntoro et al (2013). It consisted of five stories comprised of subscales: 1) diverse desires; 2) diverse beliefs; 3) knowledge access; 4) false beliefs; and 5) hidden emotions.…”

“…It is possible that childhood emergence of MTT is universal in terms of timing. However, considering these cross-cultural differences reported for MTT in adults as well as differences in the developmental trajectory of other cognitive capacities in childhood, such as theory of mind (Kuntoro et al, 2013), emergence of MTT cannot be assumed to be universal. Children now need to be tested on MTT tasks beyond Western cultures.…”

“…Children now need to be tested on MTT tasks beyond Western cultures. In general, there is limited published data on child cognitive development in Indonesian children (Kuntoro et al, 2013); therefore, this study contributes entirely towards novel data.…”

Teoria da mente e habilidades sociais: estudo com crianças pré-escolares

“…Atualmente, entretanto, o instrumento mais frequentemente utilizado nas pesquisas experimentais nesse campo tem sido a escala de tarefas de teoria da mente, elaborada por Wellman e Liu (2004). A escala se constituiu como um instrumento importante para avaliar a teoria da mente, capaz de evidenciar a multiplicidade de fatores envolvidos no curso de seu desenvolvimento, pois, além da falsa crença, permite também avaliar as habilidades de atribuição de desejos, crenças e crença/emoção (Hiller, Weber, & Young, 2014;Kuntoro, Saraswati, Peterson, & Slaughter, 2013;O'Reilly & Peterson, 2014;Shahaeian, Nielsen, Peterson, & Slaughter, 2014).…”