Narrative Discourse and Theory of Mind Development

Abstract

The authors examined experimentally whether exposure to social discourse about concepts related to mental states could promote changes in children's theory of mind understanding. In 2 studies, 3- to 4-year-old children were assigned to either a training or a no training control condition. All children were administered several theory of mind measures at pretest and 2 posttests. Training was not effective in improving performance in Study 1 (n = 37); but in Study 2 (n = 54), modifications of the training procedure led to significant improvements on measures of false belief and deception from pretest to 1st posttest. The findings support the influence of social discourse on children's theory of mind development.

The Role of Language Games in Children's Understanding of Mental States: A Training Study

“…These findings are echoed by studies that used explicitly conversational approaches to improve children's false-belief understanding (Guajardo & Watson, 2002;Lohmann, Tomasello, & Meyer, 2005).…”

Theory of Mind: An Overview and Behavioral Perspective

“…Some studies provide evidence that specific verbal training procedures can facilitate successful performance on ToM tasks (e. g., Guajardo & Watson, 2002;Knoll & Charman, 2000). The rationale for training children on ToM tasks is that such training, if successful, might illuminate the mechanisms of typical ToM development.…”

Atribuição de estados mentais e linguagem: um estudo de intervenção

“…Alguns estudos experimentais encontrados na literatura, feitos com grupo experimental e grupo controle, demonstram que as crianças do grupo experimental que vivenciam atividades de conversas sobre personagens de histórias de livros ou vídeos apresentam um desempenho melhor nas tarefas de crença falsa, quando comparadas com crianças do grupo controle que não passaram por essas atividades (Appleton & Reddy, 1996;Clements, Rustin & McCallum, 2000;Guajardo & Watson, 2002). Dois desses estudos experimentais encontrados na literatura (Appleton & Reddy, 1996;Clements, e cols., 2000), que tratam do desenvolvimento da teoria da mente mediante aplicação de tarefas de crença falsa e conversação com as crianças, despertaram nosso interesse e estão na origem da presente pesquisa, uma vez que não foram identificados trabalhos de intervenção similares realizados com crianças brasileiras.…”