Experimental Study On Children's Early-stage Theory-of-Mind Ability

Theory' of Mind (ToM) has been the most significant research field of developmental psychology in the west since 1980s. ToM ability plays an essential and important role in interpersonal action. A lot of research on children's ToM indicated that children could not pass the classical ToM tasks until the age of 4, and that children's performances in various ToM tasks were intrinsic consistence but task-specific. We designed the current experiment to examine these findings.In this experiment, 86 children (3-5 years old) were tested individually with an unexpected location task, a representational change task, and an appearance-reality task. The results were as follows:1. Children's ToM ability changed significantly from the age of 3 to 5. This ability generally improved as the age increased, but not linearly. The age of 4 was a notable turning point. Nevertheless, ToM ability still did not linearly rose after the turning. It dropped a little at the age of 4.5, then rose again at the age of 5, and finally reached a new high point. Moreover, children's performances in various ToM tasks revealed their own characteristics in developmental trend.2. When the specific of all kinds of ToM tasks was discussed despite the different ages, it only occurred between representational change task and appearance-reality task.Distinguishing ages, however, we found the specific of the ToM tasks showed an age effect.3. Research found a significant correlation among unexpected location task, representational change task, and appearance-reality task, suggesting that children's performances in the three tasks might implicate a great intrinsic consistency.