.10-15 Years Old Moderately Retarded Children Dress Up Games And Theory Of Mind The Characteristics Of Experimental Research

Since 1980s, the Theory of Mind (ToM) has become an area of much concern among developmental psychologists. The research themes related to ToM involve a wide range. Pretend play is one of the most common play forms in early childhood. The cognitive capacity during the play has become an important entrance to investigate the ToM ability. Researchers have proposed that the pretend play positively correlates to the ToM performance. Many experiments with typically developing children as subjects support this hypothesis. However, in the field of special education, there is few research neither on the characteristics of the ToM nor on the correlation between ToM and the pretend play, especially on moderate mental retarded child (MR). This research attempts to examine the characteristics of the pretend play and the ToM ability as well as the relationship between them in the moderate MR children range in 10 to 15 years old. It will not only help us further understand the link between the ToM and pretend play of MR children from a developmental perspective, but also provide us a theoretical guide on how to carry out the play training for moderate MR children's education from a new aspect.Thirty 10-15-year old moderate MR children and thirty 3-5-year old typically developing children are involved in this study. Questionnaire survey, experimental method and method of behavior observation were used to investigate moderate MR children's performance on pretend play and the relationship between their play scores and ToM performance. This research contains three parts.The first part is to investigate the features of the play in moderate MR children, the questionaire survey and behavior observation methods were used. The results showed that 10-15-year old moderate MR children's play development is signifcantly lower than that of 3-5-year olds; and their non-play-behavior frequencies is significantly higher than 3-5-year olds.The second part used two classic false-bilief tasks to investigate the moderate MR children's ToM performanc. The results showed that the moderate MR children's ToM development was sharply delayed compared to the typically developing children and the key time of moderate MR children's ToM development may be from 12 to 13 years old, but the tendency of that moderate MR children's ToM ability developed with age was similar to that of typically developing children.The third part used experimental method and behavior observation method to investigate the moderate MR children's characteristic of pretend play, while the relationship between their pretend play score and the false-belief score was also examined. The results indicated that 10-15-year old moderate MR children's pretend play development is sharply delayed compared to the 3-years olds, and their pretense ability also developed with the age as well as the development may rapidly improved during 12-13-years old. However, the performances of the moderate MR children on different elements of pretend play were not in balance. After control for age, the moderate MR children's ToM performance is significantly related to their performance on specific categories of pretend play, such as role assignment, imagination and role playing.Comprehensive results of the three parts of the study support the following conclusions:a) 10-15-year old moderate MR children's play development is significantly lower than that of 3-5-year olds.b) 10-15-year old moderate MR children's ToM development is sharply delayed compared to the typically developing children and age has main effects on their ToM performance. The tendency of that moderate MR children's development of ToM ability was similar to that of typically developing children.c) 10-15-year old moderate MR children's pretend play development is sharply delayed compared to the 3-years olds and their pretense ability also developed unbalanced with the age.d) After control for age,10-15-year old moderate MR children's ToM performance is significantly related to their perfonnance on specific categories of pretend play, such as role assignment, imagination and role playing.