Enhancing advanced Theory of Mind skills in primary school: A training study with 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds

Abstract

Recent evidence showed that it is possible to help children's Theory of Mind (ToM) development during preschool and middle childhood. This study aimed to promote advanced mentalizing skills in children attending Year 2 of primary school through a ToM training programme based on narratives followed by multiple‐choice questions and conversations about mental states. Participants were 49 children, aged between 7 and 8 years (Mage = 7.6 years; SD = 3.98 months), assigned to the experimental (27 children, 11 boys) or to the control condition (22 children, 7 boys). The two groups were matched at pretest for age, ToM, socio‐economic background, reading comprehension, and executive functioning. The classroom‐training programme was delivered by an experimenter in four sessions (each 50 min long). The ToM group improved ToM skills significantly more than the control group both in the practiced and in the transfer ToM task. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed. Highlights We developed and tested the efficacy of a training programme for improving theory of mind skills in children aged 7–8 years. The ToM training programme was effective in promoting advanced ToM skills at school in children aged 7–8 years. The study fits with the experiential‐learning account according to which social and pedagogical experiences shape socio‐cognitive development.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of social cognition training success across the healthy lifespan

“…The mean age of the investigated populations in this age range was 5.98 years (range 43–60 months). N = 10 studies reported training effects in kindergarten age (range:43–60 months); n = 3 studies included older children attending elementary school (range 7–9 years) 34 , 35 , 39 . Socio-cognitive training in both groups was labelled as either ToM-training, storytelling, or metacognitive intervention with the overall aim for children to further develop socio-cognitive skills using tasks where they had to reflect on other person’s mental states and beliefs.…”

“…Two to four training sessions per week were conducted 29 – 33 over five 27 to 20 weeks 28 . Training for children attending elementary school lasted 40–50 min to resemble the duration of a standard school lesson, and training was conducted up to five times per week 34 , 35 , 39 . Kindergarten age children participated in the training either individually 33 or in small groups of up to five children 27 – 32 , children in elementary school attended the training in small groups.…”

“…Age-appropriate materials were used in these stories including cartoon pictures 32 , a storybook with illustrations to engage children 27 , 29 – 31 or puppets 30 and the trainers encouraged children to ask and answer questions about the stories and provided feedback. In children in elementary school aged between 7 and 9 years different ToM narratives were told, which were not supported by puppets or picture books, but rather discussed in a group setting with other children and teachers 34 , 35 , 39 . Overall, trainings did not focus on specific developmental challenges posed by kindergarten/school, but rather on basic socio-cognitive processes and skills.…”

Learning to wait and be altruistic: Testing a conversational training in economic education for primary school children

“…For each topic (i.e., fairness, altruism, and delay of gratification ability), two stories have been invented or created based on children's ( Varela, 2014 ) or on scientific literature ( Larsen et al, 2017 ), with the aim of stimulating group reflection and understanding of one's own and other points of view. According to literature about the training programs ( Bianco et al, 2019 ; Bianco et al, 2021 ), each story was followed by four multiple-choice questions create with the purpose of verifying child's actual understanding of the content, his/her ability to put themselves in the shoes of the story characters (perspective-taking) and to stimulate the subsequent discussion.…”

Changes of Meta-Representational Skills in Ageing: First Empirical Evidence on the Relation between Metalinguistic Competence and Attributions of Mental States

“…The heart of ToM competence is achieved around four years of age when the child becomes capable of reasoning on how a person may be guided in their actions by wrong thoughts on reality (Wellman, 2018). Then, the competence becomes more and more mature across middle childhood (Bianco, Lombardi, et al, 2019;Bianco et al, 2021;Lecce, Bianco, Devine, & Hughes, 2017), preadolescence (Devine & Hughes, 2013) and adolescence . Interestingly, a meta-analysis of ToM studies in ageing showed that older adults score significantly poorer than their younger counterparts across a wide range of measures varying on the modality of assessment, with a mean effect size of the age-effect moderate in magnitude (Henry, Phillips, Ruffman, & Bailey, 2012).…”