Theory of mind in toddlers' friendship interactions: A longitudinal study of conflict and pretend play

This study examines theory of mind development in toddlers as seen during interactions in dyadic friendships. The study helps to fill a gap in the research literature on the development of social understanding in toddlers as seen through their peer interactions. The study is a longitudinal, naturalistic study of peer interaction in the friendship dyads of toddlers. Like the work of Shatz (1994) and Dunn (1988, 1996), this study examines the manifestation and use of children's theory of mind in naturally occurring discourse in close relationships. However, rather than focusing on family relationships, as did Dunn (1988, 1996) and Shatz (1994), this study focuses on friendships. The subjects and data from this study were extracted from a broader study, which is a videotape data-base located at the University of California, Santa Barbara, termed the Very Young Children Project. The subjects in the present study were toddlers aged between 16 and 33 months enrolled in a local daycare center. Only children involved in at least one strong dyadic friendship were selected for the study. Ten dyadic friendships were selected for study from the larger data-base. All 11 of the children in the present study were Caucasian. The dominant language of all 11 of these children was English. Children's friendship talk was analyzed for episodes of conflict and pretend play. Conflict was analyzed in terms of elaborateness and other-orientedness of justifications and frequency of justifications. Pretend play was analyzed for sophistication of representational ability and ability to coordinate play with others. Results showed that these children were justifying by 22 months and were using other-oriented and elaborated reasoning by 33 months. They also showed an early onset of the children's high levels of ability to coordinate play with their friends, though this ability increased further between 16--33 months. When these results are compared with past research, they suggest that theory of mind may develop sooner in a peer-dominated environment, such as a daycare, than in a family environment, especially with regard to ability to take the perspective of others in conflict and pretend play.