Validation of the Children’s Social Understanding Scale for Assessing Korean Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind

Abstract

Objectives: The main purpose of this study was to validate the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS), which was developed and validated by Tahiroglu et al. (2014). Methods: A total of 530 preschoolers and their mothers participated in a series of studies designed to validate the CSUS. The mothers responded to questions related to the preschoolers' Theory of Mind (ToM), executive function, and their parenting behaviors. The preschoolers were given a series of ToM tasks and a verbal ability test. The psychometric properties of the CSUS were assessed in three studies. Results: Study 1 examined content validity of the CSUS through expert evaluation, construct validity through confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability through internal consistency and test-retest reliability coefficients. Study 2 tested convergent validity by examining the relationships between the CSUS and the ToM task scores. In Study 3, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate cross-validation using different samples of preschoolers. In addition, concurrent validity was confirmed by the association among the CSUS, executive function, and parenting behaviors. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that the CSUS is a reliable and valid measure of preschoolers' theory of mind. The CSUS can be used as a tool for estimating individual differences in preschoolers' ToM, as well as correlations with other aspects of development.