ERIC Number: EJ1084408
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Jan
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0165-0254
EISSN: N/A
From the External to the Internal: Behavior Clarifications Facilitate Theory of Mind (ToM) Development in Chinese Children
Liu, Yanchun; Wang, Yijie; Luo, Rufan; Su, Yanjie
International Journal of Behavioral Development, v40 n1 p21-30 Jan 2016
The present study investigated how Chinese children develop theory of mind (ToM) in a language environment with limited mental state talk that is rich in behavior discourse. In Study 1, 60 mothers shared a wordless storybook with their 3-4-year-olds. The children completed two false-belief tasks and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised at the same time and again 1 year later. Mothers' early behavior clarifications during book-sharing predicted children's later false-belief understanding independent of children's early false-belief scores; children's early verbal ability; maternal education; and mothers' early mental state clarifications, simple mental state mentions, and simple behavior mentions. Using a discussion paradigm, Study 2 experimentally exposed 46 children aged 4 to 5 years to mental state or behavior clarifications or physical features of object talk (control group) through storytelling. Children in the experimental groups showed improvement in false-belief tasks from the pretest to the posttest. These findings indicate that behavior clarifications facilitated Chinese children's mental understanding, suggesting a culture-specific mechanism for ToM development.
Descriptors: Asians, Theory of Mind, Mothers, Parent Child Relationship, Story Reading, Verbal Ability, Intelligence Tests, Vocabulary, Scores, Prediction, Cognitive Ability, Educational Attainment, Parent Background, Task Analysis, Behavior Patterns, Preschool Children, Experimental Groups, Pretests Posttests, Western Civilization, Receptive Language, Coding, Statistical Analysis, Longitudinal Studies, Regression (Statistics), Attribution Theory, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A