Theory of Mind in Child Development - Essay Example

Theory of Mind Name Institution Theory of Mind Theory of mind can be best defined as the ability for an individual to characterize the mental states- of desire, intentions, knowledge and pretence to himself and to others and understands that other people have intentions, desires and beliefs that may be entirely different from one’s own. The theory of mind is the most critical development in the early childhood social cognition. Lack of a complete ToM may be a sign of developmental or cognitive impairment. Research has seen people generate a wide range of studies into this theory on how it impacts the social competence and success of children in school. In addition, it is particularly essential to know the factors internal to a child and those in the social environment influence the rate of development. To achieve this, researchers employ various different methods of approach to study the theory of mind. This paper discusses the various approaches taken by various researchers while conducting different studies to examining the relevance of the theory of mind in early child development. The paper will analyse four research studies related to the theory of mind (ToM) in children, indicating the approach used and the implications of each research findings to the understanding of ToM in early childhood. Ilaria Grazzani and Veronica Ornaghi carried out a research on How do use and comprehension of mental-state language relate to theory of mind in middle childhood? The study investigated the relationship between the mental-state language and theory of mind for primary school children. The researchers defined theory of mind (ToM) as “the capacity to recognize the internal states of self and others such as desires, beliefs, emotions, and intentions.” A review of results from previous studies revealed that language plays a vital role to help acquire the understanding of mental states. Language is the only thing that helps children to participate in conversational exchanges, storytelling, social interaction, pretend play and many more activities that foster the ability of children to link the noticeable behaviours and actions with the mental states that are not accessible to direct observation. However, they found only a few studies on the relationship between theory of mind and mental state language. Furthermore, most of the previous research about this topic focused on the use of mental-state language in childhood; very few focused on the comprehension of mental-state language. The main aim of the current research was to investigate how the use of mental state language links to comprehension in children aged 8 to 12 years. The study, more specifically, sought to verify the correlation between the frequency of comprehension or use of psychological language and the performance on ToM tasks. The current study hypothesis was that they would find a significant correlation. A total of 110 children participated in the study; 55 from each gender. The participants all fell into the school age category. They hailed from Northern Italy and schooled in two state primary schools located there. The researchers obtained parental consent for all children. The research subjected the participants to a six measures evaluation; epistemic and emotional theory of mind, verbal ability, how they understood metacognitive language and the type and frequency of lexicon used. To measure the verbal ability, the researchers administered a standardized linguistic test, TAM-2, which tests the children’s receptive language and assesses their knowledge on the rules of using language. This required the children to listen to target sentences and then respond to one question. All children took the false belief battery. The third test used is Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). It evaluates the emotional understanding of 3-11-year-Olds. Children are shown a page with cartoon scenarios and facial expressions depicting the expression that best fits the expression of the kid’s face. For this research, TEC was administered for only the more complex components: concealment, regulation, beliefs, mixed and moral emotions. Next was Test of metacognitive and metalinguistic verb comprehension. It contains a series of short stories, each containing the generic verb ‘say’ or ‘think’. The respondent is supposed to substitute the generic verb with a specific metalinguistic or metacognitive verb. The participant chooses each verb from a four-option choice given. Finally, the participants did a “Describe-a-friend” task. This instrument is designed to assess the frequency and type of psychological lexicon; the participants use it to describe their best friend. The researchers, in this case, modified the original prompt to suit the needs of the study. The data collected for all tests was coded and results presentations done in three sections: general descriptive statistics, regression analyses, and age comparison correlations. The findings of the study indicate that there is a moderate correlation between the use of psychological lexicon and performance on the tests on epistemic and emotional ToM. In addition, the metacognitive language comprehension plays a vital role to explain children’s performance on ToM tasks while use does not. Moreover, children’s performance on various tasks is influenced by age but not gender. The implication for ECD practice is that due to the link found between cognitive development and mental language comprehension among the school age children, it is necessary to engage them in activities that promote metalinguistic awareness and reflection in this age group. Additionally, teachers may promote reflection on the mentalistic language in classroom through specific ‘language games’. Ornaghi, V., Brockmeier, J., &Gavazzi, I. (2011). The role of language games in children's understanding of mental states: A training Study. This study investigated whether training preschool children to use mental state talk will result to advanced understanding of the talk. Secondly, the study examined whether such training may improve the children’s performance on theory-of-mind tasks and finally, how age affects the results. The researchers expected that the trained would outperform those in the control group. They did not expect any differences for age function. Seventy preschool children participated. They attended two Kindergartens in Milan, Italy. Thirty-four were 3-year-old while thirty-six were 4-year-old, all from middle-class economic backgrounds and native Italian speakers. They were gender-balanced; 35 male and 35 females. The researchers put up a control group of the same number. The researchers conducted a training study in three phases: pretest, training, and posttest. They consisted of language comprehension, false-belief understanding, metacognitive verb comprehension, emotional comprehension, and pragmatic competence. The language evaluation test is designed for 2 to 6-year-old children. It assesses naming objects, understanding words and sentences, sentence repetition and production of an instant speech for a prescribed theme. The false-belief understanding consisted of one false-belief prediction and one for explanation. The three-year-olds only took false-belief change location task while the four-year-olds went through all false-belief tasks. They were given a score of 1 for correct and 0 for wrong answer. The study used MVT by Pelletier and Astingston, which consists of 12 brief stories with illustrations and a question. They administered only the first part of the test-6questions where 1 score for the correct and 0 for the wrong answer. All participants took the TEC test by Pons and Harris. It tests the nature, cause and regulation of the child’s emotions for nine different components. The Pragmatic competence was assessed using the Pragmatic Judgment from the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language. It contained 12 points, with 1 point earned for each correct answer. The researchers analysed the data using the doubly multivariate design. Time, group condition and age were the independent variables. The dependent variables were linguistic comprehension, emotion comprehension, false-belief measures, pragmatic competence and metacognitive vocabulary comprehension. The study found that preschool children training in using mental state language has a significant effect on the kids’ comprehension of metacognitive language for the 3 and 4-year-olds. Children need training in the active use of mental state terms, listening only is not enough. As predicted, those trained children outperformed those in control group. The study provides evidence of the importance of intervention in educational context in preschools where ECD teachers have a decisive role in promoting mental state understanding. They can achieve this by intensifying their use of mental state talk with the children. Additionally, the ECD teaching practice should actively involve them children conversations concerning the mind by instructing the children to use mental lexicon. Moreover, it depicts there is need to conduct another research to confirm the results of this research; this will enable generalization of the results. Remmel, E., & Peters, K. (2009). Theory of mind and language in children with cochlear implants. The researchers conducted main purpose of this study was to measure the relationships between ToM, emotion understanding, social competence, receptive and expressive language and executive function for deaf children, hard of hearing and those with typical hearing. 17 children with cochlear implants and 13 with normal hearing participated in the study. For comparison between groups, they included only 12Cl children and a peer match. The researchers used Oral and Written Language scale for language measure. A scale adapted from Liu &Wellman (2004) measured the theory of mind measures. They measured the Social Competence using Social Skills Improvement Scale (SSIS). The results showed that implanted children showed age appropriate use of language and comprehension. No significant difference was noted in receptive or expressive language between the groups. Children with TH demonstrated a slight better performance on theory of mind tasks though the difference had no significance on the statistics. For the theory of mind scale, the CI children performed comparably to older children. Furthermore, there was no difference in the patterns of acquisition between implanted children and those with typical hearing. This study revealed that deaf children with cochlear implants do not have significant deficits in theory of mind when compared to their hearing peers. Their language skills, social skills and ToM performance, are similar to that of their typically hearing peers. For the implanted group, the older children and those who used their implants for longer demonstrated better theory of mind performance. For the typically hearing, children with better expressive language have better ToM performance. In this study, implanted children showed better ToM performance according to their age than non-implanted deaf children did from earlier research. This study implies that ECD teachers should put more emphasis on teaching language to all children irrespective of their hearing ability. Parents and teachers should expose these children to language at an early age. Morgan, G., &Kegl, J. (2006). Nicaraguan Sign Language and Theory of Mind: The issue of critical periods and abilities. In this study, the researchers investigated the false belief abilities for children and young adults who accessed language at different ages. In the study, 22 ISN signers between 7 and 39 years of age participated. All participants were severely of profoundly deaf but had hearing parents. All were students in a deaf school and had sign language intervention programs. The school is located in Bluefield’s town, in Nicaragua’s eastern Coast. The study compared ToM performance by dividing them into two groups; those who were introduced to ISN by age 10 and those who were exposed after this age. They set up a control group of five adult fluent signers aged 17-35 years. The test of belief involved a cartoon device with the ‘thought-bubble’ pictures. The participants first described the picture and undertook the other four tests. One only passed this test if he or she got all the four correct. Next was the Moral dilemma narrative. The participants were to explain the events of ‘Mr Kournal battles his conscience’ cartoon. Samples were collected from the control group. Results indicate that all participants passed the thought bubble tests. The study confirmed that late exposure to language does not hinder deaf children’s development of crucial ToM abilities. There was a significant relationship between false belief and language exposure; whereby those exposed before 10 years of age were better. The researchers indicate that false belief is dependent on language. The study's findings indicate that Nicaraguan deaf children who were exposed to sign language by 10 years of age do better on a false belief task than those exposed after ten years. On a narrative measure, late learners are able to talk and reason about many theories of mind components including desire, knowledge, beliefs and decision making. The implication for the study is that early exposure is vital for fostering natural and efficient ToM development. However, late exposure does not inhibit the deaf from understanding other people’s mental world though it poses a more difficult problem to them. The study, just like all the other studies discussed in this paper, imply that the gender of children does not affect their ToM performance. However, age, training and length of exposure to language does affect ToM performance. Therefore, children, especially the hearing impaired, should be introduced to training at an early age. References Grazzani, I., &Ornaghi, V. (2012). How do use and comprehension of mental-state language relate to theory of mind in middle childhood? Cognitive Development, 27(2), 99-111. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2012.03.002 Morgan, G., &Kegl, J. (2006). Nicaraguan Sign Language and Theory of Mind: The issue of critical periods and abilities. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(8), 811-819. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01621.x Ornaghi, V., Brockmeier, J., & Gavazzi, I. (2011). The role of language games in children's understanding of mental states: A training study. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12(2), 239-259. doi:10.1080/15248372.2011.563487 Remmel, E., & Peters, K. (2009).Theory of mind and language in children with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 14(2), 218-236. doi:10.1093/deafed/enn036 Read More

A total of 110 children participated in the study; 55 from each gender. The participants all fell into the school age category. They hailed from Northern Italy and schooled in two state primary schools located there. The researchers obtained parental consent for all children. The research subjected the participants to a six measures evaluation; epistemic and emotional theory of mind, verbal ability, how they understood metacognitive language and the type and frequency of lexicon used. To measure the verbal ability, the researchers administered a standardized linguistic test, TAM-2, which tests the children’s receptive language and assesses their knowledge on the rules of using language.

This required the children to listen to target sentences and then respond to one question. All children took the false belief battery. The third test used is Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). It evaluates the emotional understanding of 3-11-year-Olds. Children are shown a page with cartoon scenarios and facial expressions depicting the expression that best fits the expression of the kid’s face. For this research, TEC was administered for only the more complex components: concealment, regulation, beliefs, mixed and moral emotions.

Next was Test of metacognitive and metalinguistic verb comprehension. It contains a series of short stories, each containing the generic verb ‘say’ or ‘think’. The respondent is supposed to substitute the generic verb with a specific metalinguistic or metacognitive verb. The participant chooses each verb from a four-option choice given. Finally, the participants did a “Describe-a-friend” task. This instrument is designed to assess the frequency and type of psychological lexicon; the participants use it to describe their best friend.

The researchers, in this case, modified the original prompt to suit the needs of the study. The data collected for all tests was coded and results presentations done in three sections: general descriptive statistics, regression analyses, and age comparison correlations. The findings of the study indicate that there is a moderate correlation between the use of psychological lexicon and performance on the tests on epistemic and emotional ToM. In addition, the metacognitive language comprehension plays a vital role to explain children’s performance on ToM tasks while use does not.

Moreover, children’s performance on various tasks is influenced by age but not gender. The implication for ECD practice is that due to the link found between cognitive development and mental language comprehension among the school age children, it is necessary to engage them in activities that promote metalinguistic awareness and reflection in this age group. Additionally, teachers may promote reflection on the mentalistic language in classroom through specific ‘language games’. Ornaghi, V.

, Brockmeier, J., &Gavazzi, I. (2011). The role of language games in children's understanding of mental states: A training Study. This study investigated whether training preschool children to use mental state talk will result to advanced understanding of the talk. Secondly, the study examined whether such training may improve the children’s performance on theory-of-mind tasks and finally, how age affects the results. The researchers expected that the trained would outperform those in the control group.

They did not expect any differences for age function. Seventy preschool children participated. They attended two Kindergartens in Milan, Italy. Thirty-four were 3-year-old while thirty-six were 4-year-old, all from middle-class economic backgrounds and native Italian speakers. They were gender-balanced; 35 male and 35 females. The researchers put up a control group of the same number. The researchers conducted a training study in three phases: pretest, training, and posttest. They consisted of language comprehension, false-belief understanding, metacognitive verb comprehension, emotional comprehension, and pragmatic competence.

Read More