A Research On The Relationship Between Young Children's Theory Of Mind And Peer Interaction

Theory of mind (TOM) is an important cognitive ability to predict and explain the behavior and feelings of others based on reference to mental states like beliefs,desires and percepts. Since the eighties of the 20^th century.TOM has become an area of much concern among developmental psychologists. Much of the empirical work in the are of TOM has concentrated on the ascertainment of age differences in performance and the effects of task modifications on performance during the preschool years. However, attention is now turing to the question of individual differences and examination of potential correlates in the domain of social interaction (e.g., pretend play and TOM, socail interaction skills and TOM). Specifically the relationship between TOM and peer interaction has received a particular attention because peer interaction play an important role in children's development.This present research attempts to examine the relationship between TOM and peer interaction (mainly including the ability to associate with partners and the behavior to associate with partners). It will help us to understand the inner mechanisms and individual differences in the development of children's TOM, and it can provide us the theoretical and pracitical guide on how to foster children's TOM competence and their social communication skills.In the first part of this dissertation, the important previous researches on the development of children' psychological understanding and the relationship between TOM and social interaction were reviewed comprehensivly. Firstly, we briefly introduce the changes of TOM's concept and the classical research paradigm-false belief tasks, which are the focus of TOM research. Secondly, several important theoretical explanations in this field are disscussed. Then a main description about the important factors influencing the development of children's early TOM—family interacions and peer interaction experiences. Meanwhile, a critical analysis on current researches and problems concering this area is also made. A limitation of the previous researches of TOM-peer interaction relationship is that the designs are most cross-sectional ones. Due to this, all designs cannot clarify the issue of cause-effect problems. It can be noted that evaluate the causal factors in children's understanding of mind, children must be exposed in the information of mental states through experimental operations. Based on this view, we have done the following several experiments.There are three Studies in the second part of this dissertation. In Study one, we first explored whether there are relations between young children's TOM, measured with a battery of tasks and their peer interactions, measured with a peer nomination procedure and teacher assessment, measured with a Scale of the Ability to Associate with Partners, and the behaviors that took place during 3-to 4-year-olds and their playmates in free play by natural observation with video. The major findings are as follows: (1) young children's TOM abilily develops as their age changes, but 4 year-old is a criticl stage for TOM's development. The performance of 4 year-old children on TOM tasks is much better than that of 3 year-olds; There are correlations among TOM tasks.