Research On Development Of5-8Years Old Children Based On The Fact That Interpretive Theory Of Mind

The development of theory of mind is a lifelong process.Even though theunderstanding of false belief of preschool children can be recognized as a greatprogress of children’s theory of mind, some researchers reckon that, what the childrengain is copy theory of mind. Hereafter, an agreement was widely reached that childrenbetween the age of five and eight will develop interpretive theory of mind.Interpretive theory of mind refers to “children are able to comprehend that not onlyoutside information can influence mental activities of individuals, but that their mindscan imply great impacts on their interpretation of the outside world.” It is a kind ofmore complicate ability gained in late childhood. Compared to copy theory of mind,children with interpretive theory of mind tend to understand the process in whichindividuals actively construct and interpret outside information, and that individualsbuild a mutual correlation between their mind and outside word rather than simplyand directly copy outside information in an objective perspective.Present researches indicate that children show their understanding to interpretivetheory of mind at the age of six, however, correspondent research in China is far fromsufficient and controversies still exist that when Chinese children start to developinterpretive theory of mind. It is found that the research paradigms and materialadopted in previous researches differs. That is, the research paradigms and materialmay lead to great variance in results.This paper aims at exploring the development situation of theory of mind basedon reality of children between five and eight years’ old; meanwhile this paper exploreswhether research paradigms and material affect experiment results.This paper tested120children between the age of five and eight, using reviseddoll paradigm and ambiguous figure paradigm to research the characteristic ofchildren’s interpretive theory of mind based on reality. The results shows that:1.5-year-old children can’t understand the ambiguous information could lead tomultiple interpretations.And6-year-old children begin to receive the interpretive theory of mind based on facts.7-year-old children are able to explain the phenomenon better that different people maybe have different interpretations on the same information.The theory of mind on8-year-old children are mature.There are not significant genderdifferences in children’s interpretive theory of mind based on the fact. 2. Children in different age groups get different grades and the variance issignificant. The grades of doll paradigm is significantly higher than that of ambiguousfigure paradigm. That is, research paradigm affect the results.