Young Children's Understanding of Other People's Feelings and Beliefs: Individual Differences and Their Antecedents

Abstract

Individual differences in young children's understanding of others' feelings and in their ability to explain human action in terms of beliefs, and the earlier correlates of these differences, were studied with 50 children observed at home with mother and sibling at 33 months, then tested at 40 months on affective-labeling, perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks. Individual differences in social understanding were marked; a third of the children offered explanations of actions in terms of false belief, though few predicted actions on the basis of beliefs. These differences were associated with participation in family discourse about feelings and causality 7 months earlier, verbal fluency of mother and child, and cooperative interaction with the sibling. Differences in understanding feelings were also associated with the discourse measures, the quality of mother-sibling interaction, SES, and gender, with girls more successful than boys. The results support the view that discourse about the social world may in part mediate the key conceptual advances reflected in the social cognition tasks; interaction between child and sibling and the relationships between other family members are also implicated in the growth of social understanding.

Personal narratives about states of suffering and wellbeing: Children's conceptualization in terms of physical and psychological domain

“…An age-related increase is expected to be more marked in body-related events, as young children's tendency to reason in concrete terms may limit their spontaneous ability to connote physical events by making reference to psychological states. Although some studies showed girls' superior comprehension and production of affective mental states (Brown, Donelan-McCall, & Dunn, 1996;Dunn et al, 1991;Fivush, Brotman, Buckner, & Goodman, 2000), gender was not significant when 3-yearolds (Fivush & Wang, 2005) and 5-to-12-year olds talked about personal events. Thus, in the present study we looked at whether the use of psychological lexicon would vary with gender, depending on age and event domain.…”

“…Moreover, family discourse exposes young children to event discussions in which the child's or other people's behaviours and internal states are involved (e.g. Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, & Youngblade, 1991;Fivush & Nelson, 2006;Reese & Fivush, 1993;Ruffman, Perner, & Parkin, 1999;Vinden, 1997). Thus, we expected children to be more likely to reason on the causes of events such as psychological events and accidents in which people's behaviour plays a direct role, rather than events involving illness, where causes are often not dependent on one's behaviour.…”

Los niños y la comprensión del mundo mental de los otros: Teorías explicativas

“…Esta perspectiva de la intersubjetividad se ha complementado de forma muy acertada, con los estudios longitudinales realizados por investigadores como Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla & Youngblade (1991). Estos estudiosos han demostrado que existen variables asociadas al desarrollo de la TdM, como son las habilidades lingüísticas.…”

“…Estos estudiosos han demostrado que existen variables asociadas al desarrollo de la TdM, como son las habilidades lingüísticas. El desarrollo del lenguaje y la exposición a conversaciones con contenido mental predicen, en efecto, posteriores niveles de ejecución en tareas de TdM (Astington & Jenkins, 1999;Slade & Ruffman, 2005;Dunn, et. al., 1991).…”

“…Las investigaciones de Dunn han permitido determinar que la participación del niño en conversaciones con contenido mental en los primeros meses de vida (13 meses) predicen el desempeño en tareas de la TdM hacia los 5 años. Por otra parte, además del contenido mental y emocional de las conversaciones, se ha encontrado que la fluidez del lenguaje de la madre, así como la participación de los niños en juegos cooperativos con sus hermanos predice un mejor desempeño en la comprensión de las falsas creencias (Dunn, et al, 1991;Hughes & Dunn, 1998).…”