This study investigated the link between expressive phonological impairments, phonological awareness, and literacy. Previous investigations of literacy skills in children with speech impairments have given mixed results; here we considered whether presence of additional language impairments or severity of the speech impairment was an important prognostic factor. Thirty-one children with expressive phonological impairments were compared with control children matched on age and nonverbal ability on three occasions, at mean ages of 70, 79, and 91 months. On each occasion they were given three tests of phonological awareness: one involved rime-matching and two involved onset-matching. At assessments 2 and 3 literacy skills were assessed. Children with phonological impairments scored well below their controls on phonological awareness and literacy, independent of whether or not they had other language problems. Although many of them knew letter sounds, they were poor at reading and writing nonwords as well as real words. It is suggested that both the speech impairment and the literacy problems arise from a failure to analyze syllables into smaller phonological units. The severity of the phonological problems in relation to age is an important determinant of literacy outcome; children who have severe expressive phonological impairments at the time they start school are at particular risk for reading and spelling problems.

Some recent studies have found a relation between the number of siblings 3-4-year-old children have and their performance on false belief tasks. 2 experiments reported here examine a variety of factors in children's social environments, including daily contact with peers and adults as well as the numbers of their siblings, on a battery of false belief tests. In Experiment 1, 82 preschoolers were studied in Rethymnon, Crete, in order to obtain a range of extended kin available as a resource for the child. In Experiment 2, 75 Cypriot preschoolers were studied in Nicosia in order to examine the influences of each child's daily social contacts, as measured by maternal questionnaire. Logistic regression revealed that the factors which account for most of the predicted variance on the theory of mind tests were (a) the number of adult kin available (Experiment 1) or adults interacted with daily (Experiment 2), (b) the child's age, (c) the number of older siblings a child has, and (d) the number of older children interacted with daily. The results suggested that theory of mind is not simply passed from one sibling to another in a process of social influence. It seems more likely that a variety of knowledgeable members of her or his culture influence the apprentice theoretician of mind.

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Preschoolers often fail a false-belief test. Competing explanations have been offered from two perspectives: the theory of mind and the theory of reasons for action. A concept which unifies the two has been overlooked—the concept of a ‘need to know’, whereby someone has a reason for directing actions to the goal of forming a mental representation. Current tests that present the actor as a passive information user rather than an active information collector might underestimate preschoolers' conception of psychology. In Expt 1, a theory of mind test presented a false belief as the outcome of an actor's plan of action involving her need to know something. Preschoolers showed 85 per cent success when the test took the form of hide-and-seek, whilst success in a standard false-belief test was 48 per cent. In Expts 2 and 4 it was found that success was not due to a low level heuristic: in the former, asking children to act out the plan of action gave 94 per cent success compared with 66 per cent from a modified standard task. Success from conventional verbal questioning was reliably lower. Further probes revealed flexibility; in a true-belief test children recognized that the actor's plan would succeed, and in an ignorance test (Expt 3) they showed understanding that the seeker would not know where to search. We suggest that traditional tests underestimate preschoolers in two ways. One is in neglecting practical intelligence in favour of verbal questioning. The other is in challenging them with tests which pose an inferential problem about the intentionality of the actor and thus disturb children's ‘intentional stance’. Traditional tests reveal an important limitation on preschoolers' use of a theory of mind but not an organizational gap in their construction of psychology

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Some recent studies have found a relation between the number of siblings 3-4-year-old children have and their performance on false belief tasks. 2 experiments reported here examine a variety of factors in children's social environments, including daily contact with peers and adults as well as the numbers of their siblings, on a battery of false belief tests. In Experiment 1, 82 preschoolers were studied in Rethymnon, Crete, in order to obtain a range of extended kin available as a resource for the child. In Experiment 2, 75 Cypriot preschoolers were studied in Nicosia in order to examine the influences of each child's daily social contacts, as measured by maternal questionnaire. Logistic regression revealed that the factors which account for most of the predicted variance on the theory of mind tests were (a) the number of adult kin available (Experiment 1) or adults interacted with daily (Experiment 2), (b) the child's age, (c) the number of older siblings a child has, and (d) the number of older children interacted with daily. The results suggested that theory of mind is not simply passed from one sibling to another in a process of social influence. It seems more likely that a variety of knowledgeable members of her or his culture influence the apprentice theoretician of mind.

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