Experimental Study On Han And Tibetan School-age Children's Interpretive Theory Of Mind Ability

The development of theory of mind is a lifelong process, and beyond school years it is experiencing the change from "false belief" to Interpretive theory of mind. Interpretive theory of mind refers to the insight that not only the world can influence the "mind" but also the "mind" similarly influences how the world experienced. This image of a two-way street connecting the mind and world. Bona fide matters of interpretation,which are commonly understood to turn upon the realization that persons possessing precisely the same information still often come to warrantably different beliefs about what is arguably one and the same thing.Both domestic and international researches directly aimed at the developmental study of children's understanding of Interpretive theory of mind, much of which suggestion that it is not until 7 years of age or later that children begin to understand that one object or message may have multiple meanings, yet such ability is far away from fully developed.Otherwise, many studies suggest that much of children's knowledge at first is presented in an implicit,nonverbal, procedural format, before processing to increasingly explicit levels, can help us make sense of much of children's cognitive development. Studies from other countries suggest that children's understanding of distinction among beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion may appear at an implicit level before they show such knowledge in their explicit reasoning.However, there is a poverty of research aimed at the developmental study of children's understanding of Interpretive theory of mind at domestic. Especially, few Chinese psychological researchers have given enough value to question about children's understanding of one object or message may have reasoning multiple meanings differentiation between beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion. This study directly aimed to explore the children's understanding of distinction among different types of beliefs. And pay more attention to how Interpretive theory of mind appears and develops under different cultures, different languages and different social influences. Another question was investigated in the study that when children's understanding of distinction among beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion may appear at an implicit level before they show such knowledge in their explicit reasoning, and the relationship among children's implicit and explicit differentiation between beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion are discussed.The test group were sampled both Han and Tibetan children from elementary school in Lhasa. Children in the test can speak Chinese fluently. Under the condition of this study,the conclusion are as follows:1. In experimentl, Carpendale and Chandler's research paradigm was used to study children's understanding of the phenomenon that "people may form different interpretations of the same information".8-to-13-years-olds'(n=130)explicit understanding of interpretive theory of mind was found to be limited. Children of 8 years old began to realize that ambiguous information could lead to multiple interpretations. And 10-to-12years-olds'understanding seemed to have a stable Interpretive theory of mind with the test questions varied. However, children's nature understanding about interpretive theory of mind is not fully developed.2. Children's performance on beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion was varied with the task condition.3. The diversity of nationalities and cultural background played a less important role in the development of children's Interpretive theory of mind.4. Children's judgments on their performance were asked, their confidence about matters of fact or about matters of opinion are varied with their explicit respond.5. In experiment2, Banerjee and Yuill's research paradigm was used to investigate children's implicit and explicit differentiation between beliefs about matters of fact and matters of opinion. Children aged 7,9orllyears(n=89) were asked to make judgments either about ambiguous matters of fact or about matters of opinion and then heard an opposing judgment from an expert. All age group conformed to the opposing judgments on factual matters more than they did to the experts'views on matters of opinion.6. Only the oldest children explicitly recognized that opinions are subjective and can't be wrong.7. The study evaluated the extend to which the above findings regarding the explicit and implicit measure were associated with each other. It's suggest that the key patterns regarding implicit and explicit understanding of distinction between facts and opinions appear to dependent of each other.