Promoting theory of mind during middle childhood: A training program

Lecce, Serena; Bianco, Federica; Devine, Rory T.; Banerjee, Robin

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2014.03.002

Cited by 116 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…These results are important as they demonstrate that it is possible to promote a genuine advanced ToM understanding in young children and that this effect was significant, controlling for SES, verbal ability, and executive functioning. In other words, the training tested in the present study was successful in supporting a nascent advanced form of mind‐reading rather than strengthening an ability already in progress as done in previous studies involving Year‐4 children (9–10 years of age; Lecce et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

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

Bianco

Lombardi

Massaro

et al. 2019

Infant and Child Development

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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.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

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

Bianco

Lombardi

Massaro

et al. 2019

Infant and Child Development

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“…Support for this prediction comes from several recent studies suggesting that elementary-school children’s personal use of mental-state language is correlated with their false-belief understanding, and that training accurate use of this language improves false-belief performance (e.g., Grazzani and Ornaghi, 2012; Lecce et al, 2014; Bianco et al, 2016). Recent work in our lab suggests that this association persists into adulthood: adults who use more mental-state language when describing social images are faster at accurately predicting the behavior of an agent in an avoidance false-belief task, suggesting that these individuals more readily attend to mental-state relevant information and are faster at retrieving mental states under time pressure (Roby and Scott, 2016b; see also Lecce et al, 2015).…”

Section: Predictions From This Mentalistic Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Relationship between Social Experience and False-Belief Understanding: A Mentalistic Account

Roby

Scott

2016

Front. Psychol.

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It was long assumed that the capacity to represent false beliefs did not emerge until at least age four, as evidenced by children’s performance on elicited-response tasks. However, recent evidence that infants appear to demonstrate false-belief understanding when tested with alternative, non-elicited-response measures has led some researchers to conclude that the capacity to represent beliefs emerges in the 1st year of life. This mentalistic view has been criticized for failing to offer an explanation for the well-established positive associations between social factors and preschoolers’ performance on elicited-response false-belief tasks. In this paper, we address this criticism by offering an account that reconciles these associations with the mentalistic claim that false-belief understanding emerges in infancy. We propose that rather than facilitating the emergence of the capacity to represent beliefs, social factors facilitate the use of this ability via effects on attention, inference, retrieval, and response production. Our account predicts that the relationship between social factors and false-belief understanding should not be specific to preschoolers’ performance in elicited-response tasks: this relationship should be apparent across the lifespan in a variety of paradigms. We review an accumulating body of evidence that supports this prediction.

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“…In the last two decades, various lines of inquiry have demonstrated that social input enriched with mental state discourse advances children's ToM development. Such inquiries include mental state discourse training in classrooms (e.g., Lecce et al, 2014), conversational environment of deaf children (e.g., Peterson and Siegal, 1995), and family characteristics including maternal sensitivity (e.g., Meins et al, 2003), content, and quality of family conversation (e.g., Jenkins et al, 2003), and sibling relationship (e.g., Hughes et al, 2010). In the case of schooling experience, Flavell (1987) claimed 30 years ago that the epistemic discourse in teaching and learning context could be a “hotbed” (p. 27) for the acquisition of false belief understanding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Children's Understanding of Teaching and Learning and Their Theory of Mind Development: A Causal Analysis from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Wang

Chui

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Children's understanding of the concepts of teaching and learning is closely associated with their theory of mind (ToM) ability and vital for school readiness. This study aimed to develop and validate a Preschool Teaching and Learning Comprehension Index (PTLCI) across cultures and examine the causal relationship between children's comprehension of teaching and learning and their mental state understanding. Two hundred and twelve children from 3 to 6 years of age from Hong Kong and the United States participated in study. The results suggested strong construct validity of the PTLCI, and its measurement and structural equivalence within and across cultures. ToM and PTLCI were significantly correlated with a medium effect size, even after controlling for age, and language ability. Hong Kong children outperformed their American counterparts in both ToM and PTLCI. Competing structural equation models suggested that children's performance on the PTLCI causally predicted their ToM across countries.

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Promoting theory of mind during middle childhood: A training program

Cited by 116 publications

References 64 publications

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

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

Rethinking the Relationship between Social Experience and False-Belief Understanding: A Mentalistic Account

Young Children's Understanding of Teaching and Learning and Their Theory of Mind Development: A Causal Analysis from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

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