Social Influences on False Belief Access: Specific Sibling Influences or General Apprenticeship?

Abstract

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.

Early Social Experience Predicts Referential Communicative Adjustments in Five-Year-Old Children

“…It remains to be seen how the present findings, showing stronger effects of non-familial over familial experiences on the development of referential communicative adjustments, can be reconciled with previous reports, showing that measures of familial interactions predicted ‘false belief understanding’ [12], [13], as assessed with verbal reports. One possibility is that the communicative adjustments observed in this study might be mainly driven by children’s assumptions on the presumed cognitive capacities of the addressees, rather than by children’s understanding that the beliefs, desires, or intentions of other agents differ from reality [11], [13].…”

“…Given that the extent and nature of the social interactions experienced by children is widely thought to influence the development of their social understanding [5], [7], [12], [13], we considered two main sources of social interactions experienced by children, namely familial and non-familial experiences, reconstructed from interviews with the parents of the children. Familial experiences were indexed with the parents’ level of education (11 levels, 7.4±1.6, group mean ± SD, range 4.5–10.5) and years of experience with siblings (i.e.…”

“…Here we elaborate on the suggestion that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children’s social understanding [5], [7], [11], [12], [13]. Humans are exceptional among existing hominids for experiencing early developmental exposure to cooperative nonkin [14], i.e.…”

A Maternal Influence on Reading the Mind in the Eyes Mediated by Executive Function: Differential Parental Influences on Full and Half-Siblings

“…Sibling sex may also be a factor as Ruffman et al [62] found opposite sex pairs to have better ToM skills than same sex pairs. Other studies, however, found no relationship between age or number of siblings and ToM skills [64] [65]: Lewis et al [66] found that ToM skills increased with the number of other adults and non-siblings interacting with a child, i.e. the total network of interactions has to be taken into account.…”

Cognitive capacities and composite cognitive skills in individuals with Usher syndrome type 1 and 2

“…Typically, the explanation of the delayed or deviant development is that sensory impairment, whether auditory or visual, prevents the child from perceiving all information necessary to fully partake in the social interaction, hence missing out on much of the experiences on which development relies (Garfield et al, 2001). There are strong indications that individuals need ample opportunities to interact and socialize with others in order to develop ToM to full and nuanced extent (Lewis et al, 1996;Garfield et al, 2001). As stated previously, there are correlations between language proficiency and ToM (Schick et al, 2007;Garfield et al, 2001;Slade, 2005).…”