The Relationship Among Language, Emotion Understanding And Theory Of Mind

Theory of mind (TOM) is the ability to predict others mind stateand behavior. The study of TOM is the new tendency in childrencognitive development. Wrong-belief task is the traditionalresearch method, which is the wrong representation of the world.To investigate the structure and effective factors of TOM,researches about the relations between TOM and other psychologicalability are done. Many are about TOM and emotion, TOM and language.These years, the life-span view of TOM is emerged. As the ageincrease, one' s cognitive ability and social ability areincreasing, and the TOM ability may increase accordingly.This study combines two periods, which are the important age forreaching the two level of TOM ability. The data discussion is aboutthe TOM development, the effect of age and gender factors, and therelations among language, emotion and TOM. Especially analyze therelations among language, emotion and the second level of TOM, thatis the new discussion. This study uses cartoon for study object toreduce the effect of language in study.The result is (1) As the age increasing; children' s TOM abilityis increasing. Children aged 4～5 can't understand the second-orderwrong-belief. Age 7～8 is the important developmental period ofsecond-order of TOM. (2) As the age increase, children' s emotion understanding ability is increasing. Girl' s is better than boy' s.Age 7～8 is the important developmental period. (3) There is asignificant correlation between emotion and TOM after controllingthe language and age factors. (4) Language affects the study much.Language ability and TOM ability may the two separately mechanism.