The Influence Of The Mental State Terms On False Belief Understanding For3-5Year Olds

Children’s theory of mind has been the hot research topic for cognitive psychology and developmental psychology in the latest30years. Currently it is also one of the most active and productive research fields, in which false belief understanding is the core of research.There are many factors influencing the development of false belief understanding, in which language is an important influencing factor. At present, some researchers concern about mental state terms’effect on false belief understanding. They think that mental state terms are the carrier to manifest children’s own mental state. However, there are also many inconsistencies in a small number of researches which selected Chinese children as research subjects. Basing on the research design as cross-sectional study combining with longitudinal study and research scheme as correlative study assisted by intervention study, this research selected the relationship between mental state terms and false belief understanding as research topic, and it studied the acting mechanisms and developmental traits of this relationship in depth as well. The dissertation includes three parts.The first part is literature review. The definition, research paradigm and research status on false belief understanding and mental state terms were presented firstly. Then the research status about the relationship between mental state terms and false belief understanding was introduced detailedly. Finally, basing on analyses of the facing problem, the research ideas and significance were put forward.The second part consists of a series of studies, which focused on the developmental traits and acting mechanisms of false belief understanding and mental state terms. It includes six studies. Study1and study2used tracking study. Basing on the background of storytelling by looking at picture, the relationship between false belief and mental state terms production was discussed by using classical false belief research paradigm and belief-emotion research paradigm. Then study3and study4explored the relationship between mental state terms understanding and false belief understanding further. With the full demonstration for the close relationship between mental state terms and false belief understanding, study5and study6used intervention study to reveal the causal mechanism of mental state terms on false belief understanding. The details are showed as following:In study1, research design was tracking study. Infant’s false belief understanding ability was tested by using the classical false belief task paradigm. The recording materials of infant’s storytelling by looking at picture was collected and coded. Then the relationship between mental state terms using and false belief understanding was explored. The result indicated:(1) the ability of false belief understanding developed rapidly for children aged3-5;(2) Chinese children used more desire terms and emotion terms when they told the story by looking at the picture, while they used less belief terms, in which the words’want to’and’to be’were in the largest proportion. Emotion terms and belief terms were closely related with the ability of false belief understanding. In study2, tracking study was used for9months with test in3time points. The study explored whether mental state terms using was related to the performance of belief-emotion task which was the higher level of false belief task type when children aged3-5told the stories. The result showed that situational attribution was the main type of belief-emotion attribution for children aged3-5.5years old, and infants showed more belief attribution with the time growing. When the general language ability variable and age variable were controlled, belief terms correlated significantly with the pass rates of belief-emotion understanding in the first two time points. It was easier to pass the later belief-emotion task for the subjects with belief terms rapid growing.The three different mental state terms (think, feel, want) of the false belief understanding task problems were changed in study3to explore its effect on the performance of false belief task of the children aged3-5. The result showed that the false belief understanding performance was partly influenced significantly by using different mental state terms in the test problems of false belief. For children, the total score of false belief under the condition of’think’was significantly higher than the condition of’want’and’feel’.Study4tested infant’s ability of mental state terms understanding and ability of false belief understanding respectively to compensate for the possible defects from research design. The result indicated that the score of mental state terms understanding was the effective predictor for false belief understanding.The goal of Study5and6was to explore the effect of mental state terms training on infant’s false belief understanding by the experimental design of experimental group with pretest and posttest as well as control group. The topic of study5was to discuss whether the different ways of intervention on mental state terms would influence the classical false belief understanding. The topic of study6was to explore further whether the way of intervention could influence belief-emotion task. The result showed that listening to the stories with rich mental state terms and dialogue training of common mental state terms could promote the ability of false belief understanding, belief-understanding and mental state terms understanding of children aged4, while which couldn’t promote the production of mental state terms as well as emotional attribution type significantly.The third part of the dissertation was a general discussion of the whole research. Based on the results of this research and others, the author demonstrated the acting mechanisms and developmental traits of the relationship between mental state terms and false belief. At last, the author analyzed the value and problem of this research and pointed out the future direction of such research.