ERIC Number: EJ757144
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1040-9289
EISSN: N/A
Action, Consciousness and Theory of Mind: Children's Ability to Coordinate Story Characters' Actions and Thoughts
Pelletier, Janette; Astington, Janet Wilde
Early Education and Development, v15 n1 p5-22 2004
This study reports on an analysis of the relation between kindergarten children's developing theory of mind and their understanding of characters' actions and consciousness in story narrative, based on Bruner's (1986) notion of the dual landscapes of action and consciousness. Wordless picture books were used to model these two aspects of narrative through the direct portrayal of action and thought by way of thought bubbles and adults' explicit metacognitive talk. Children were asked to retell stories following both an experimenter's and the teacher's initial storytelling. Children's ability to coordinate story characters' thoughts, beliefs and intentions (consciousness) was measured by the frequency of reference to both the character's action or presence and the content of his/her thought bubbles in the stories. Results of the analyses revealed relations among children's age, language ability, non-verbal intelligence, theory of mind development, and their ability to coordinate consciousness and action in the stories. Younger children who have less developed theory of mind more often retold just the action in the real world without reference to thought, or else described the scene depicted within the thought bubble without reference to the character who held the thought. Implications for education, such as teaching children to talk about the mind, are discussed.
Descriptors: Kindergarten, Picture Books, Language Aptitude, Cognitive Development, Preschool Children, Story Telling, Cognitive Structures, Cognitive Ability, Schemata (Cognition), Reader Text Relationship, Psychological Studies
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 10 Industrial Avenue, Mahwah, NJ 07430-2262. Tel: 800-926-6579; Tel: 201-258-2200; Fax: 201-236-0072; e-mail: journals@erlbaum.com; Web site: https://www.LEAonline.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Kindergarten
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A